by Brian Parker
“On your six, sir!”
He looked back in time to see Private Dickerson running up behind him. Together they fired their unsuppressed M-4s, heedless of the noise that was sure to bring any infected in the area. The blossoms of fire from the end of Dickerson’s weapon stung Jake’s eyes with every shot. More rounds came speeding their way from the house and they both fell into the prone.
Jake searched for any type of cover, but they were in the middle of a driveway. Dickerson fired again and stood, sprinting a few meters before he used his rifle to get down and return fire at the house.
The lieutenant shook his head. Private Dickerson hadn’t been out of Basic Training that long when all of this hit and the old three-to-five second rush technique was one of the primary things they taught recruits. “Fuck it,” he muttered, then shouted, “Cover me while I move!”
“Got you covered!” Dickerson squeezed off a few more rounds.
As Jake stood and began sprinting, the .50 cal on the Stryker opened up behind him. He dove for the ground instinctively before looking up. On the right side of the farmhouse, window glass tinkled as it fell to the gravel. The wooden siding around the first floor window was covered with bullet holes. Muffled gasps of pain emanated from inside the house.
“She got him!” Dickerson laughed, standing up. “That’s my girl. Damn, sir. You see that shooting, sir?”
“Dickerson! Get—” A single shot cut him off as Dickerson crumpled to the ground. “Son of a bitch!”
Sergeant Wyatt unleashed another sustained volley from the .50, this time focusing on a second story window. Glass shattered and the old wood splintered. He waited for several seconds to see if there’d be a response from the shooter, but there was none. She must have gotten that one too.
Two Cullen brothers, two shooters down.
Jake ran at a low crouch to help Private Dickerson. The man lay face down on the gravel and he flipped him over. Blood covered his chest. He hadn’t been wearing body armor because he couldn’t fit in the driver’s hatch with it on, so there was nothing to stop the rounds from tearing into him.
He checked the man’s pulse. He wasn’t breathing. Jake tried desperately to remember the combat lifesaving skills he’d been taught. Then it came to him. The first thing he needed to do was check for breathing. Without oxygen, nothing else mattered.
Dickerson wasn’t breathing. He positioned himself up over the top of the private and blew two quick breaths into his mouth.
“Eric!” Sergeant Wyatt shouted. Jake glanced at the Stryker as he pressed down on the man’s chest. She was running full sprint toward them. She’d abandoned the .50 cal.
“Eric,” she yelled again. “I’m coming for—”
Another blast came from the house and Jake threw himself to the ground, grabbing his rifle. He fired three quick rounds in the direction of the house.
“Oh god!” Wyatt screamed. “Medic!”
Jake grimaced. This mission wasn’t going the way he’d envisioned it. The girls had somehow gotten away during a break in by a group of infected and now both members of his team were down, one permanently.
“Fuck!” he shouted in frustration. He instinctively wanted to go help Wyatt, but he since he had no idea where the sniper was, he knew that going back to the wounded soldier would put him in in the gunman’s line of sight for sure.
He had to move or he would be the sniper’s next target. Using the butt of his rifle, Jake surged to his feet. The Stryker was over a hundred yards away, so he sprinted toward the closest cover available.
Jake slammed his shoulder into the half-open farmhouse door, tumbling inside.
24
* * *
NEAR TYRONE, OKLAHOMA
OCTOBER 29TH
Jake pushed himself away from the bloody body of a middle-aged woman. Her eyes were open, but the gaping hole in her throat told him that she’d never transition into one of the infected. She was dead.
On his feet once again, he flipped down the night vision monocle mounted to his helmet, bathing the room in a green glow in half of his vision. Jake slapped at the light switch, plunging the small foyer into darkness in an attempt to give himself a small advantage over the shooter who already knew the layout of the home. He had no way of knowing where that sniper was, whether he was in the house or in the barn. Jake would have to clear the house before he could attempt any type of exfil or first aid for Sergeant Wyatt.
He couldn’t remember how many rounds he’d fired so he dropped the magazine and slammed a new one home quickly. He bent and retrieved it, realizing he’d been very low on ammo before the mag change.
There was a bedroom immediately off the foyer. Inside, a large man in only his underwear lay dead, perforated by a half-dozen of the .50 cal rounds. It wasn’t a pretty sight, even with the washed out green color of his night vision.
He closed the door quietly behind himself and slid across the foyer to the kitchen. It didn’t take long to see that it was clear. Several steps toward the back of the house and he stood behind the doorframe leading into the living room. On first glance it was clear, but he had to enter the room and clear the area behind the couch where he couldn’t see.
First floor clear, he told himself as he slinked toward the staircase in the foyer. Assaulting up a set of stairs was infinitely more dangerous than defending them from above, a fact that he was acutely aware of as he placed a foot on the first creaky step.
The first of several screams reached his ears as he eased his weight from the floor onto the stairs. The infected from the surrounding area were being drawn toward the sound of the gunfire—not the least of which was the .50 cal that Sergeant Wyatt fired earlier. He checked behind himself, quickly verifying that he’d latched the front door. It looked secure.
The infected outside would absolutely be a problem. For later, he told himself. He had to find the sniper before he could worry about them.
He turned back then crept slowly upward. Jake heard the heavy breathing before he’d gone more than three steps. He paused, waiting for a moment to try to identify where the sounds were coming from. It was muted, and not entirely clear, so he didn’t think the shooter was on the landing, prepared to shoot him in the face the moment his head appeared.
Jake wished he had a flash-bang that he could use to stun the gunman, but of course, he didn’t have anything like that. He listened for a few more seconds, then rushed up the stairs. To his left, a hole appeared in the plaster as the sounds of gunfire reverberated through the upstairs hallway.
Jake dove to the right through the haze of disturbed plaster dust, catching his hipbone on the banister post. The pain was jarring, but would pale in comparison to getting shot, so he ignored it, scrambling away from what he assumed to be a bedroom.
Jake flipped over onto his stomach and aimed his rifle at the doorway. Muffled curses drifted from the room and he could hear the clicking of metal as the gunman tried to clear a misfeed.
Jake surged to his feet, rushing across the small hallway. In seconds, he was at the doorway and saw the shape of a large man fumbling with a rifle. He fired two quick shots before he swept his back against the wall outside. One of the rounds might have hit the gunman, but he didn’t think the other one found home.
The shooter fired one more shot and the rifle misfired again. Jake turned the corner, lifting his weapon. He squeezed off two more rounds, both finding their mark. The man shuddered and the rifle fell away.
He aimed and shot the man through the top of his head—this world was no place for mercy or for taking chances. He checked the closet, and then cleared the rest of the upstairs before returning to the bedroom where he’d killed the man he assumed to be the sniper.
His legs were a shredded mess. The Stryker’s .50 cal had blasted a hole in one thigh and almost severed his other leg below the knee. Jake tried to piece together the sequence of events. The man’s weapon, a bolt-action 30-06 hunting rifle, had some shrapnel damage to the receiver, likely from the .50 and was
the cause of the jam that saved his life. A pistol lay on the opposite side of the bed. The slide was locked back. Empty.
The sniper, one of the Cullen brothers he assumed, had still been able to shoot at Sergeant Wyatt after he’d been shot, proving that he was a determined asshole. Most people would have given up in that situation.
“Shit!” Jake groaned. Caitlyn was injured outside with all those infected inbound.
He leapt down the stairs and went into the room where the other brother died. Through the broken window, he could see a couple of the creatures milling about on the gravel between the house and the Stryker. Wyatt was nowhere to be seen.
He took his time, aiming carefully for headshots on the infected. While they would certainly die of their wounds in a few hours if he hit them elsewhere, a headshot was the only guaranteed way to put them down instantly.
In minutes, it was over. All the infected in the immediate area were dead. Jake switched magazines once again and stuck his head out the window to make sure the front porch was clear. It was, so he pulled himself back through, careful to avoid the jagged shards of glass. He went to the front door and left the house open behind him.
He jogged across the gravel toward the Stryker. Passing Private Dickerson’s body, he said a silent prayer of thanks that it hadn’t been desecrated. That would only last a few hours though. Once the body began to decompose and the infected were able to smell him, they would begin feeding.
He made it to the vehicle and found Sergeant Wyatt. She’d tried to get back into the Stryker, but likely couldn’t reach the switch up high to open the ramp. Jake couldn’t remember if they’d engaged the combat lock inside before they left Vern Campbell’s farm, so it might have been a wasted effort on her part anyway.
“Wyatt, are you okay?”
Her head lolled sideways as she looked up at him. “Lucky… I didn’t…shoot you,” she gasped, blood oozing from the side of her mouth.
“No,” he replied, smiling. “I’m gonna look you over, okay?”
She nodded and he positioned her onto her back. He pulled the quick release straps on her body armor and it fell away, revealing a dark stain across the t-shirt she wore underneath. A quick look under the shirt showed an entry wound near her clavicle. The sniper was up high, so the 7.62-millimeter round must have went through the open space between her neck and the armor. He was probably aiming for her head, but his own wounds threw off the shot.
“How… How bad?” She was shivering.
“Just a little hole,” he lied. “I need to see your back, so I’m gonna roll you over, okay?”
She didn’t answer. He rolled her toward him and saw a massive, bloody hole bigger than a softball near her kidney. The bullet traveled completely through her torso and exited down low. The body armor probably enhanced the damage since the kinetic energy of the round had nowhere to go when it left her body.
Under the best circumstances, her injury would have been critical. Here, in the middle of a cornfield, surrounded by the infected, with no medical personnel, it was an absolute death sentence.
She gurgled, trying to say something that he couldn’t understand. Putting her on her side had filled her lung with blood. “Shit,” he laid her back down on her back, allowing the blood to flow out of her body like it had been when he first arrived.
There was little he could do except make her last moments as peaceful as possible. “You did good, Caitlyn,” he cooed, taking her head in his lap and stroking her hair. “You saved my life. You shot both of those Cullen brothers.”
She blinked slowly, and opened her mouth, but no words came out. Caitlyn Wyatt died on his lap in the middle of fucking nowhere.
“Hurry!” Sally hissed. There’d been a terrible amount of gunfire from the farmhouse—including what sounded like a machine gun from a war movie. She could only assume that the Cullens were shooting at them. It was paramount that they put every bit of distance that they could between them and those two lunatics.
“I’m running…” Katie wheezed. “We…need to slow…down.”
Sally turned, trying to see her sister in the failing light. The corn stalks were overgrown, easily seven feet tall and blocking out the new moon overhead. Through the shriveling ears of corn and dried leaves, she could see Katie holding a hand against her side. They’d only been running for a few minutes. If the brothers drove through the field in one of those trucks, they could catch up to them easily.
She slowed to a walk, letting Katie catch up to her. “We need to keep going. Are you okay?”
Katie nodded, taking great gulps of air as her chest heaved with exhaustion. “I just…just need a minute.”
“We should slide over a couple of cornrows so we aren’t as easy to track.”
They did their best to slip between the dried out stalks of corn without breaking them or leaving clear evidence of their passing. Once they’d traversed six rows, and received multiple scrapes from the coarse leaves, Sally decided they’d gone far enough and began walking down the narrow space between rows again.
“Where are we going?” Katie asked.
Sally shrugged. “I don’t know. Anywhere but here.”
“Are we gonna go back to Grandpa’s?”
Sally thought about it for a moment. “Probably. I mean, where else are we gonna go?”
“What if those two are waiting for us when we get there?”
“Then we’ll sneak away. Maybe try our luck in Liberal or something.”
That seemed to satisfy her sister’s questions so they walked in silence for a few minutes. Then the telltale sounds of feet slapping against the ground and breaking corn stalks made them freeze. Katie’s hand shot out and gripped Sally’s upper arm as they both ducked down as quietly as they could.
Three rows away, several infected ran by, rushing toward the sound of gunfire at the farmhouse. The girls held their breath, fearing that even the slightest exhale would attract the creatures’ attention. Katie’s fingernails dug into the flesh on the underside of Sally’s bicep, probably drawing blood. But neither of them dared to move.
At the farmhouse a quick flurry of gunshots caused the nearest infected to begin screaming as they ran, heedless of the stalks of corn tearing at them. After the infected had passed their hiding area, the night was quiet once more. Are the Cullens shooting at each other, or are they shooting at the infected that’d answered the call of Tim’s gun?
They were questions that Sally couldn’t answer, and to be honest, she didn’t care if she ever learned the answer. She just never wanted to see the brothers again.
They stayed hidden, crouched low until Sally’s knees began to ache. She eased down gently onto them, relieving the pressure from her quads. As she did that, Katie’s fingernails eased out of her skin, which felt worse than when she was squeezing. The fire-like pain threatened to make her cry out, so she bit her knuckle.
There were still infected in the corn. Each time they thought the coast was clear another would stumble by. They stayed put for almost thirty minutes, enduring the prolonged feeling of being hunted. The minutes were interspersed with random gunfire, telling the girls that the Cullens were still out there, searching.
Finally, Katie whispered into her ear. “I think it’s clear.”
Sally agreed with her and they clasped hands, rising up. “We just need to keep going. I think we’re headed toward the highway.”
Katie squeezed her fingers in response and they stepped off, only to stop dead in their tracks. Behind them, someone was coming toward their position. They could hear the muffled curses as stalks of corn snapped, echoing across the night. The use of words meant it was not one of the infected.
“Give me the knife,” Sally directed. She was done being the victim. She was going to make those assholes pay.
Her sister complied, passing the knife into her hand. A corn stalk broke close by, seemingly right behind them. It was dark down in between the rows of corn. A wide shape materialized in the darkness.
Sally lunged with the knife, aiming for her pursuer’s chest.
25
* * *
NEAR TYRONE, OKLAHOMA
OCTOBER 29TH
Jake gasped in surprise, stumbling backward after he took a hard hit to his chest. He caught himself before he fell and made even more noise than he already had pursuing the girls through the cornfield. He looked down at his body, the night vision monocular he wore showed him something he never imagined possible.
“What the—” A large kitchen knife was embedded into the Kevlar lining of his ballistic armor. It dangled impotently from the fabric, having hit the ceramic armor plate underneath and not gone any farther.
Movement directly in front of him made him throw his arm up as a fist came out of his blind side and hit him squarely across the jaw. Night vision devices were great for things directly in front of the wearer, but they effectively rendered them blind to everything else.
Jake had endured the required boxing matches at West Point like every cadet before him, so he was familiar with getting punched. The blow was hard and the bare knuckles slamming into his jaw made his eyes water, but it wasn’t as strong as an average male’s punch.
“Stop!” he whispered, tensing for another blow from the woman who’d evaded his sight. “Your grandfather sent me to rescue you.”
“What?”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down.”
A woman appeared in front of him. In the green glare, he couldn’t really discern any of her features, but it had to be one of the Campbell girls. The odds were too astronomically great that there’d be another survivor in the field just then.
“My grandfather is dead,” she whispered.
“No. He survived. We found him out near the highway. He’s been shot up pretty bad, but he should pull through.”
The woman turned and he looked beyond her to where another girl eased up cautiously. They gripped hands and the first one asked, “Who are you?”
