by Mark Tufo
BT turned his off this time. “Don’t like this, Mike.”
I waited to say anything. I didn’t like it either, but there was no sense in echoing his words.
Bags and Reed came back a few moments later. They reported directly to Overland. I was not a fan at all that the rest of us were being kept in the dark. Although a gunfight had not ensued, zombies hadn’t shown up, and more importantly, there was no clack of reaver claws on the metal decking.
“It looks like it was a malfunction,” Overland came over the common frequency. Sounded about as convincing as a jaded, over-it, used car salesman telling you that the 1978 AMC Pacer had been thoroughly checked for mechanical issues and had come back with a clean slate.
“What’s he hiding?” It was clear BT had picked up on Overland’s deception as well.
I had BT gather up the squad and we were now bringing up the rear, something I’m sure Kirby was just thrilled about. I had every intention of heading up and asking Overland what the hell was going on when the first shot rang out. Had to have been a couple dozen variations on what is going on? come over my headset.
“Quiet!” Overland didn’t shout, but the order came through loud and clear. “Who fired and what did you see?”
What followed was radio silence. Whoever had done it seemed to have jumped the gun, literally. In any case, they weren’t about to come forward.
“I swear if it was any of you, I’m going to make you do push-ups until your shoulders fall out of their sockets,” BT told our squad. It wasn’t any of them. I saw the muzzle flash up and over to our right, but who specifically was the culprit, I didn’t know. Any stealth we planned on employing had taken a huge raspberry sounding shit all over our plans.
As far as I was concerned, this mission was burned and this the perfect time to abort and try again at a different time. Overland was not of the same mind.
“Captain Talbot, send your demo team up.”
Sergeant Rose looked my way before heading up, Lance Corporal Kirby followed her.
“She’s been teaching him the ropes,” BT offered as way of explanation.
Kirby having access to explosives was like giving a toddler a fork in an electrical outlet testing facility, no good could come from it.
“You approve that?”
“As if. They were doing it on the side. Figured when they said they wanted some alone time, it was to make non-explosive fireworks.”
“Leave the unit for a few days and it all goes to shit.” I followed my personnel up.
“Captain, your demo now?” Overland asked.
“Don’t touch the stuff. I like my appendages where they are.”
“And you’re here, why?” Overland asked.
“Because you have two of my people and I want to know what you plan on doing with them, considering this whole mission just got compromised.”
“I’m a major and I ordered it, that’s all you need to know.”
“We’ve been through this, Major. I don’t give a shit about your rank, I do give a fuck about the safety of my people. And I told you when I agreed to join this little clusterfuck that my people were mine to order, not yours. And now that someone in your little group got happy fingers and torched our element of surprise, I don’t think sending a team alone to plant explosives is a good idea.”
“Are you sure you didn’t fire? That way, you could use it as an excuse to have us leave?” This from Corporal Baggelli. I liked the guy but his propensity to immediately hit the anger button was going to be his undoing. He made sure to shoulder into me as he posted up.
“Want to get your chihuahua off of me?”
“Chihuahua? I’m a fucking pit bull!” He slammed into my chest. Not wanting to be outdone and having my own relatively short fuse, I clocked him.
“If you say so,” I told him as Private Reed caught him before he fell to the deck.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Overland asked.
My squad was making its way toward the ruckus. I’d escalated the ordeal; would the SEALs ratchet it up further?
“He had it coming,” Sergeant Walde told Reed, who was debating helping Bags or launching into my chin with a right cross.
“Done?” Overland asked.
“With that problem, sure. Now, what aren’t you telling us?”
Overland looked around. Nearly all eyes were on us, which was disconcerting considering everyone had NVGs on—looked like we were being attacked by some insectoid nest. He shut his headset off and motioned for me to do the same as he tapped my shoulder to follow him away from the group. I would have, too, if not for the fact that our hosts for the evening had decided to come out of hiding and make themselves known.
“Defensive positions!” Overland called out.
I grabbed Rose and spun her around; Kirby was quickly in tow as we got back into position. So far, all the action was to our side and up front, whoever was operating the M249 SAW light machinegun had it up and running, firing quick bursts. Had no idea the number of enemies, as we were keeping an eye out on our quadrant. I thought we should move to the wall instead of being out in the middle of the dance floor where anyone could come up and request a go-around. Still, Overland hadn’t given the order and it was unlikely he was going to listen to much of what I suggested. And if we just up and left, we would be exposing the group’s flank.
“Contact,” Stenzel said.
I, as of yet, hadn’t seen anything. She fired. By the time her third shot was off, I saw them, at least twenty of them, running full speed. They had to be coming out of a hatch I’d not seen when we came in, as they were right behind us. By now, the entire perimeter, soldiers, Marines and SEALs, were shooting. Safe to say, we were surrounded.
“We need to move forward! We’re going for the top deck,” Overland ordered.
“So much for a tactical withdrawal,” BT said.
This made no sense. Where we’d come in was only a couple hundred feet away and we had boats to get us the hell out of here and he wanted to go further in and up. We’d rung the dinner bell loud enough that the entire ship’s worth of zombies were going to come and check it out. We did not have the munitions necessary to have any kind of a long, drawn-out fight. The SAW had completely opened up now; how many zombies were there that necessitated that type of response? That didn’t bode well for us.
“Rose, what do you have in that bag of yours?” I yelled over the din.
“Claymores!” Kirby responded. “I could hold one!”
“Don’t you dare!” BT yelled. “Fool will probably consider himself the ‘enemy,’” he shook his head, referring to the raised printing on the front of the curved explosive that read, front toward enemy.
“I have some homemade dynamite.” Rose was rooting around in her bag.
“Most people make muffins, Rose,” I told her. She pulled out a cardboard-colored stick. It looked longer and skinnier than a regular stick of TNT, but if Rose said it was an explosive, I didn’t doubt her.
“This is way more fun.”
“That fuse looks awfully short.” It couldn’t have been more than three or four inches, sufficient for a firecracker or a bottle rocket, not something capable of completely obliterating half a dozen bodies.
“Slow-burning.” She was fumbling around, looking for a lighter. Kirby produced one and lit it without asking. It was a fuse for sure—slow-burning? Not so much. Rose tossed it quickly. The results were devastatingly effective and absolutely terrifying. Zombies were ripped in half, jagged body parts were strewn about the blast area. Ribbons of intestines flew and splattered like crimson streamers across the floor, something I could have gladly gone without seeing, but it had the added effect of tripping up those behind.
She may have sheepishly mumbled an apology, but I was too busy shooting zombies to care or acknowledge. Just being happy she hadn’t taken us out too was good enough for me. We were collectively moving forward but it was a slow, shuffling, stutter step-type of locomotion. It wasn’t fast enough
to deal with the influx of zombies. I was back to having the magic bullets, which helped enormously; still wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough to turn the tide away.
“What the fuck was that?” Overland shouted.
Zombies were streaming toward us at a full sprint, and just as quickly jerking back as they were riddled with bullets. Arms flying about, legs flailing, heads blasted like overripe watermelons, the staccato bursts illuminating the area in a surreal, nightmarish strobing effect.
“Zombies swimming for the boats, Major. Either you evac now or we have to leave!” Staff Sergeant Nance, the lead zodiac pilot, was yelling. Even over what was going on right next to me, I could hear the sound of rifles firing over my headset as the zodiacs were defending themselves. This whole damned thing had been a setup. We were penned in and our escape plan was getting waylaid. I had a moment where I locked up; the escape run with Charlie’s people, Trip dying to save me…. I froze, my rifle at my shoulder, finger on the trigger, zombie in my sights. But I didn’t really see him; my mind’s eye was focused on something else. I knew this day was coming, only so long you can avoid the flashing human “Check Mind” light, no matter how much booze and drugs you use to try and cover it up. It’s difficult to explain. I wasn’t afraid of dying; in fact, wasn’t thinking of my own demise at all. It was the sheer number of deaths I had borne witness to that had ground my gears to a halt. There’s only so much one can be expected to endure, and I had apparently reached my limit.
Rose, in a bid to stave off the onslaught, had, at some point, tossed another explosive stick and, like a hand smack to the side of a 1950’s television, my static cleared. Had a feeling a doctor was never going to prescribe me that particular medication, no matter how effective. I pulled the trigger, neatly punching a hole into a zombie’s chest, creating an artificial cavity he would never be able to get filled. No idea if anyone noticed my mini-breakdown. If called upon it, I would say my weapon had a stovepipe, not that my mind got jammed.
“Captain Talbot, forward progress is an impossibility. Up to you and your team to make a hole!” Major Overland shouted. I couldn’t be sure, but the way he grunted out the sentence sounded as if he was in a hand to hand combat scenario.
“Rose?” I asked.
“There’s not enough room for a claymore, sir, and I only brought so many party favors!”
“How much area to the back?”
“About fifty feet, but we’re also in a steel room…”
She left the rest of what didn’t need to be said unsaid. Seven-hundred or so steel ball-bearings being sent out with explosive force would rebound with much of that energy intact. Three of our sides were close to being overrun. It was to my right that had the least number of enemies; we needed to get there to have something safe to our backs.
“Major, we need to move to the…” I wanted to say, “aft,” or “port,” or fucking starboard, but even if I knew what those terms meant on a ship, internally, I was turned around. “Your left!”
“You heard the Captain! Everyone to the port side!” the major ordered.
Our group was being compressed. Initially, we’d been tactically spread out, but it was getting to the point that if someone tossed a chunk of coal in the middle, we’d end up with a diamond by the end of the firefight.
“Reloading!” BT called out. I added his field of fire to mine while he popped in a fresh mag. Grimm was struggling with a jam; his head down, he was not keeping up with our short retreat.
“Grimm! Heads up!” I yelled. Kirby was reaching to grab his side just as a zombie collided into him, face first. Grimm’s neck was bent back as he took a zombie head straight to his NVGs. I could hear him yell out—good chance he had a busted nose and maybe a destroyed orbital socket or two to go along with it—but that was far down on the list of things to be concerned about at the moment. The goggles hung askew and blood was pouring from his nose as I went to help them. Don’t even have a clue where Tommy got it, but a thick, heavy-looking pipe swung past my field of vision and crushed the skull of the zombie trying to rip Grimm’s nose off. The cracking sound was bad enough; the spray of brain across my face was worse. Kirby was able to pull Grimm deeper within our ranks, giving him a chance. Tommy was violently swinging his weapon like a low-rent ninja. A zombie’s legs buckled as Tommy viciously brought the pipe down upon the top of her head. Another was completely skewered through the mouth and discarded. Tommy was in full beast mode. I made sure to stay out of his range while also keeping his blind spots safe. Assuming he had any.
We’d pulled back to the wall, bulkhead, whatever, couldn’t go any farther. We were beginning to lose personnel. The darkness, their sheer numbers, the confusion, all factors working against us. Sometime during the firefight, we lost comms, oh sure, we were close and there was plenty of yelling, but nothing was coming through the earpiece. I couldn’t discount the chance that the zombies were jamming the signal. I was ninety-five percent sure that wasn’t the case, but not a hundred. That alone was unsettling. That they were soon going to be as cunning as humans spelled our doom. Lord knows we tried to wipe ourselves out under the guise of ideology, oppression, or just a grab for resources. Zombies didn’t need any precursor, they wouldn’t have to convene an emergency session on why they should take out the remaining survivors in Wichita, Kansas; they just would because they could.
Someone shouted they’d found a door. At the time, I couldn’t even process the words. Every available resource was being used to fight, to save, to survive. Rose tossed another explosive, but now it was into the maelstrom of zombies as they were entirely too close to bother trying to hinder their progress. It did give a momentary reprieve between waves, as zombies were splashed and splattered. Like I normally did, I’d overpacked magazines knowing full well I’d rather carry the extra weight than get caught without. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I was convinced I’d used up over half my stores. If that was the case for me, that meant most of the soldiers out here were getting ready to run dry. My squad, having been on enough raids that have gone askew, were of the same ilk as me and would have brought more ammo than deemed necessary. Just take Rose, for example. I knew without a doubt that her crazy firecrackers weren’t part of the original mission statement or even her equipment list.
Stenzel tapped my shoulder. I turned to see a lit-up staircase and Kirby pulling Grimm through the opening. Either we’d lost more people than I’d thought or the evacuation was further along. We were moving excruciatingly slow towards the egress, like a hair-clogged bathroom sink. About the only thing we had going for us was there were so many zombies they were their own worst enemy, constantly trying to push past others to get at us. But the problem was the same with us. As we were swirling toward the exit point, Tommy had, at some point, switched out from his pipe to a pistol, as he couldn’t safely swing it around anymore. It was down to Tommy, myself, Major Overland and Corporal Baggelli as we held the zombies at bay for as long as possible.
“Go!” Overland urged. I followed Tommy in, then came Bags. The major was immediately behind him, then it was BT that yanked that door shut, crushing three sets of arms as he slammed it home. I spun the hatch and held it. No way these zombies had been on a ship this long and didn’t know how to open a door. Overland pulled his web belt off and tied it around the wheel and the handle; it would buy us some time, unless we were trapped in this stairwell by another force of zombies ahead of us. Once the rush of blood stopped pounding in my ears and I felt safe enough to let the door go, I took a look at our beleaguered force. We’d lost at least ten people and, from the wounds I was looking at, that number was going to increase by half.
“BT,” I said nervously.
“Squad is all accounted for. Grimm suffered the worst of it. He’ll live, but he’s out of the fight.”
Obviously, that was bad news and to make matters worse, we’d now need to spare two people to ambulate him from place to place as we sought a way off this floating death barge. I’d taken off my goggles as,
for some reason, a light was burning brightly along with a dozen flashlights. People were subconsciously doing their best to push away the darkness we’d all just endured. I intercepted a glimpse that Overland gave Sergeant Walde. We had more than a few bite wounds among the injured. The merciful thing to do was put a bullet in their head. But how do you tell a kid in their early twenties, who's scared shitless and in pain, that this is for the best as you place the muzzle of your weapon against their temple? I felt for Overland. They talk about the “burden of command,” but this burden was too heavy for anyone to have to bear.
“All right, people, we have to get moving. The original mission parameters are still our objective.”
I was about to tell Overland to shove his mission parameters, but before I could even open my mouth, BT had laid a hand on my shoulder. He was shaking his head. “Not the time,” he said quietly.
“If not now, when? The next time we’re surrounded?”
“Something to say, Captain?” Overland’s gaze threatened to burn out my retinas.
Something was going on unsaid in that look, but I couldn’t figure out what the fuck it was. Oh, it was important, extremely important, and yet he was not in a position to share.
“Ready to go when you are, sir,” I told him.
He nodded, the intensity of that stare softened somewhat, from granite to concrete. I noticed Bags and Reed grabbing the weapons from those with bite wounds. I knew what they were doing; I was curious to what Walde was handing them; turned out to be a syringe. I mistakenly assumed it was an antidote. I suppose in a way it was, because once you plunged that needle into your body, you were never going to become a zombie. It was some hot-boxed heroin derivative. It got the user high for a few minutes before sending them over to what we all hoped were greener pastures. I supposed it beat a bullet. This might have been one of the few times I was thankful Trip wasn’t here. Can’t imagine how difficult it would have been trying to keep those away from him while also trying to explain just how effectively deadly they were. Walde said a few gracious words to the people staying behind. There were tears, some from pain and the rest…well, that doesn’t need any explaining. Not sure if I would have been so gracious had I been in the same predicament. I gave them a quick head nod. A couple returned the gesture, the rest, too lost in grief or the grips of the drug. As we went out the door on the next deck, BT spoke. “Promise me, Talbot, if I take a bite, you give me a bullet. I’m not going out higher than a fucking kite with drool coming out of my mouth.”
