Authors: Dirk Patton
The rain had started, big drops but not a lot of them and
lightning lit the night like a strobe light. The thunder wasn’t far behind,
the bass boom so loud it rattled the metal container I was standing on. Shit.
Metal in a thunder storm. Maybe not my best idea, but it was all we had. The
infected should be arriving very soon and we didn’t have time to do anything
else. The shooters were moving quickly and efficiently and the wall was
quickly getting lined with people laying on their stomachs, rifles resting on
sand bags and pointing to the south. Diesel engines roared behind me as more
containers arrived. More engines added to the noise as the fire trucks
maneuvered into place and I turned to watch.
The largest fire truck, one of these impossibly long ladder
trucks that has to have a pivot point in the middle and another driver at the
very back, came to a stop on the side of the highway and across Forrest Avenue,
front bumper only yards from the wall. With a whine of hydraulics it extended
two giant legs on each side that would stabilize it when the ladder was
raised. Firemen scurried around the truck, two of them dragging a thick hose
across the pavement and connecting it to a fire hydrant. Other firemen set
about raising the ladder and I could see the captain himself sitting in the
basket at the top of the ladder. He waved then hit a switch that turned on a
bank of brilliant halogen lights. The lights were 50 feet in the air and aimed
over the wall and lit up the highway like it was noon. The other two trucks,
both ladder trucks but smaller, positioned themselves to either side of the big
truck, directly behind the two machine gun emplacements, raised their ladders
and turned their lights on too. The result was a 250 yard width of wall that
was as well-lit as any stadium I had ever seen at night.
More containers arrived and the shooters kept filing up the
ladders and into their sections. Lightning flashed again, close enough that
the thunder rattled my fillings almost before the lightning faded. The rain
started falling harder and the wind picked up a little, blowing out of the
south and driving the rain directly into the faces of the shooters. I lifted
the walkie talkie to my mouth and reminded the NCOs to enforce fire discipline,
making sure their people were firing single shots only, not full auto. That
done, I didn’t know what else to do at the moment, so I stood in the rain and
waited for the first infected to appear on the highway.
I didn’t have to wait long. The first infected appeared at
the edge of the light cast by the fire trucks, a female that had already broken
into a sprint even before we could see her, apparently enraged by the bright
lights. Nearly every rifle on top of the wall opened up and kept firing until
the body was pulped into mush. I immediately got on the radio and screamed at
the NCOs to get their units under control. As a group I estimated they had
just blown through four or five thousand rounds of ammunition to kill one
infected. Up and down the line I could hear the NCOs yelling and cursing and couldn’t
help but smile as the moment took me back to my youth. The rain was coming
harder now, the lighting and thunder a constant. A young boy ran up to me,
breathless and slipping on the wet metal roof of the container I stood on. I
reached out to help him regain his balance but he managed it himself and stuck
another walkie talkie out for me to take.
“So you can talk to my dad, I mean Jim Roberts,” he said,
turned and dashed off and slithered down the ladder the way I used to be able
to move. I raised the radio and identified myself.
“Major, we’ve got you close to 3,000 feet of wall built. Do
you want us to turn the corner or start stacking?” He was shouting over the
roar of the forklift’s diesel engine.
“Turn the corner but head south with the wall a couple
hundred feet before you start stacking. I want them funneled in to the
rifles.” I answered.
“You got it.”
I raised the other radio and sent Alpha unit of the ready
reaction force to the west end of the wall, telling them to provide security
for the forklift drivers while they were placing the containers. While I did
this a dozen more females appeared in the lights, but this time only the
shooters on the containers directly to their front opened up. These were the
shooters stationed on the container I was standing on and most of them were
picking their shots and making them count, but there was one that was popping
off rounds as fast as he could. I went over to where he lay prone on the
container and kicked him on the bottom of the foot to get his attention. He stopped
firing and looked over his shoulder, then started to swing his rifle around and
stand up when he saw me. Reaching out I pushed the rifle back onto the sand
bag, pointed in a safe direction and squatted next to him and told him to watch
how the people on either side of him were shooting. He nodded and turned back
to watch them before facing front again.
The next wave of infected was larger, close to 100 females
this time. They sprinted into the light screaming so loud I could hear them
over the rain drumming on the wall, only the thunder and sounds of rifle fire
drowning them out. The firing was slightly more disciplined this time and all
100 were cut down well short of the wall. Firing died out and everyone seemed
to be holding their breath, waiting. The rain intensified and I was thankful
for the lights. Without them, in the pouring rain, we wouldn’t have been able
to see the infected until they were piling up against the wall. I paced up and
down the wall, nodding to the NCOs as I moved through their area. Rachel
stayed with me and Dog paced us on the ground, looking up at us as he moved, distinctly
unhappy at being left out of the action. I paced as far as the eastern machine
gun, manned by Wilbur, squatting down next to the old vet.
“Gunny?” I asked him.
“Yes, sir. I was.” He replied, hands on the M60 and eyes
trained out on the far edge of the light.
“Knock the sir shit off, Gunny. I’m John.” I said, also
keeping watch on the front.
“Yes, sir.” He responded with a grin.
“Smart ass Jar Head.”
“Yes, sir. That I am, sir.” He laughed, then straightened
up as bodies appeared downrange.
Female infected burst into the light, running flat out, and
I didn’t see a back edge of the group. Slapping Gunny James on the shoulder I
stood and unslung my rifle as the shooters engaged. The sound of rifles firing
blanked out all other sounds, infected bodies dropping well away from the wall,
but more females hurdled the dead and kept coming. I sighted in on a running
figure and dropped it with a head shot and kept finding and dropping targets
until I had burned through a magazine. Changing magazines I strode to the west
along the wall, checking on the NCOs and shooters. Several shooters were
frozen, just staring at the screaming females running at us and I pulled them
out of line and sent them down the ladders, telling Rachel to go down and find
replacements. She scampered down the ladder like a monkey, Dog meeting her at
the bottom, and started moving through the people at the bottom finding
volunteers.
I only pulled six people off the line and I was surprised
that the number was so low. Lots of people think they can pick up a rifle and
go into combat because it looks so easy in the movies, but until you’ve had an
enemy trying to kill you and you have to pull the trigger to save yourself and
the man next to you no one really knows how they’ll react. Some people are
built for it, some aren’t. Rachel was back with six new shooters in short
order and I pointed them at the NCOs who quickly plugged them into place.
Football players were already dashing up and down the line, gathering empty
magazines and leaving full ones, and I glanced down below to make sure there
was still a crew loading magazines. Satisfied I turned my attention back to the
front.
The wave of infected was thickening and there was already a
two foot high pile of bodies downrange, and it was growing, but the volume of
females was increasing and they were slowly pressing their front edge closer to
the wall. Raising a pair of binoculars I looked to the sides of the highway
and saw females moving through the forest, their speed tempered by having to
fight through the underbrush. The shooters in front of them were engaging,
somewhat more successfully than the ones focused on the highway. The herd kept
increasing in numbers and soon the highway was a solid mass of infected bodies.
Males were now in view and were pushing and stumbling forward, often gaining a
lot of ground as the shooters were focused on the much faster females.
I was just turning to run down the wall and tell Gunny James
to join the fight when his machine gun started firing. He was targeting the
mass of bodies at the far edge of the lights and a moment later his grandson
joined him and two streams of fire reached out and started chewing up the
infected. Bodies were torn apart, limbs severed and heads exploded, but the
infected still pressed forward. They knew no fear and had no self-awareness to
warn them that what was happening to their comrades was about to happen to
them. Soon every weapon on the wall was firing and the piles of bodies in
front of the wall continued to grow and the leading edge crept closer.
Raising the binoculars I checked the edges of the pavement
again. Infected flowed through the woods in numbers too large to count but the
shooters were spread along a nearly half mile front and were keeping them back
for the moment. I looked to the east where the terrain should be working in
our favor, and for the moment saw nothing moving. Back to the highway I
watched as the press of infected bodies continued to increase as they flowed
forward and over their dead brethren. The males were stumbling over the
difficult footing but the females seemed to not even notice they were running
on fallen bodies rather than a nice smooth road. Inexorably the herd pushed
forward against our fire and were now no more than 50 yards from the wall.
The firing kept up and we were burning through thousands of
rounds a minute. I ran to Gunny James’ position and checked on his ammo
supply. He was an old hand and was doing a good job of maximizing what he
had. Running the other way I was also pleased to find his grandson was just as
frugal. If I survived this I was going to find a Marine and apologize for
having snuck onto Camp Pendleton where I painted the battle cannon on display
at their welcome center a shade of hot pink. Maybe.
To the west I could see Jim Roberts and his crew setting the
first upper row of containers. The shooters on the container already in place
had to move out of the way while the new container was stacked in place, then a
ladder on the end got them on top of the new container and they were now 20
feet off the ground. Looking at the front edge of the herd pushing in I knew
we’d get overrun before the second level of the wall was in place. Turning I
went to the nearest ladder, waiting for one of the football players with an
armload of full magazines to finish climbing up then raced to the ground and
straight back to where the police officer had dropped off the mortar for me.
Rachel was at my side and Dog ran with us, taking up a guarding stance when we
stopped at the waiting crates.
Using my Ka-Bar I pried off all the lids then quickly
started setting up the mortar. The 60 MM mortar is really simple. There’s a
round base plate that lays on the ground onto which you set the closed end of
the mortar tube. The mortar tube is just that, a tube with a closed end and a
fixed firing pin at the bottom. It’s only about four feet long or so and about
a foot from the muzzle an adjustable bipod is attached. The bipod has an
azimuth adjustment built into it for setting the elevation of the mortar. When
you get it where you want you simply pick up a mortar bomb, align it at the
mouth of the tube, let it go and be sure you move behind the plane of the muzzle.
The bomb drops down the tube where its explosive propellant strikes the firing
pin, ignites and it is propelled out of the tube like a bullet out of a rifle.
The biggest difference here being that the tube is not rifled as the mortar
bombs are stabilized with fins. The idea is they are shot in a high arc and
fall down onto your target. 60 MM mortars are one of the smaller sizes the US
uses, but they still pack quite a nice punch when all you’re using them against
is flesh and bone.
Mortar set up I adjusted the azimuth to 75 degrees, made
sure Rachel and Dog were behind the tube, then dropped the first bomb and spun
away to avoid the muzzle blast. There was a deep thumping sound and I turned
to look down range. A few moments later there was a bright flash and loud
explosion from beyond the wall. Grabbing the radio I called the NCO
responsible for the section where I’d been standing and asked where the bomb
had struck.
“Your distance is good, hitting about a hundred yards down
range, but you need to adjust left. That one hit in the trees.” I turned the
mortar a few degrees to the left then sent another round on its way. A moment
later the NCO called and told me I still needed a few more degrees to the
left. Making the adjustment I let another round fly and waited for the report.
“Spot on Major. Right on the yellow line if we could see
it. Fire for effect!”
I started sending a round every ten seconds, wanting there
to be enough delay for the hole I was blowing in the herd to fill back in with
more infected. After six rounds I adjusted right a couple of degrees and sent
another six rounds with the same timing, then moved to the left and sent
another six. Telling Rachel to stay with the mortar and make sure it wasn’t
messed with I ran for the wall to see what effect I was having. Climbing a
ladder I noted that the firing by the shooters hadn’t slowed and was dismayed
when I reached the top of the wall. I looked at a solid sea of infected and they
were now within 30 yards of the wall. What the fuck? The NCO for that area
saw me and ran over, looking almost comical as he ran flat footed to keep from
slipping on the rain slicked metal.
“Each shell kills dozens and blows a huge hole in their
ranks, but they flow into it in seconds and just keep on coming.”
“Damn it. OK, I’m going to send up a couple of the reaction
units and step up the rate of fire. We’ve got to hold them until this wall
gets raised.” I turned and flew back down the ladder, not waiting for a
response. Running for the mortar I keyed the radio and told Bravo and Charlie
units to deploy to section 12 which was the center section. The two NCOs
acknowledged as I reached the mortar.
“Feed these to me as fast as I can fire them,” I said to
Rachel. “And for God’s sake, don’t drop one.” She went a little white, but
nodded and pulled a bomb out of its case to have it ready to hand to me.
I started firing as fast as I could feed the bombs into the
tube. Every tenth round I adjusted a little to the right, then back to center,
then left. I was keeping up a good rate of fire, explosions from the far side
of the wall coming every two to three seconds. When I was about half way
through my supply of rounds I paused to check on the wall building. The
stacked sections were getting closer, but were still a long way off. The rate
of fire from the wall had not lessened one bit and I was starting to worry we
were going to run out of ammo before we even got the wall raised to 20 feet.
Pushing the worry aside I started feeding the mortar again, the explosions
resuming with the same frequency. I was in a rhythm; hang, drop and turn, grab
new round and repeat and was caught by surprise when I held my hands out and
Rachel didn’t have a bomb ready for me.
“That’s all there is,” she said, straightening up and
stretching her back. I looked at the empty crates, still surprised, then shook
it off and headed for the wall. Rachel and Dog ran with me, Dog rushing ahead through
the pouring rain and not about to be left out again he bounded up the ladder ahead
of us. Great. Who was going to carry his big, furry ass back down?