Even Zombie Killers Get The Blues (Zombie Killer Blues) (10 page)

Chapter 25

“Well, now what?” Jonesy stood kicking through the
rubble, looking for his own stuff where his room had been. Everything was
scattered and gone. Even the safe in the basement, where we had kept our extra
weapons, hidden under the cement slab of the floor. I had thought that might be
OK, but the crater extended past the basement, and water from the river had
flooded into the crater.

“That asswipe is gonna pay, Nick. My entire
collection of games is gone.” Jonesy held up the shattered remains of his Xbox.

I sat down on a rock, looking out over the river. I
was tired. My feet hurt. My back hurt. I was worried about Brit. I wasn’t sure
where to go next. Well, scratch that. I knew where to go next. I just wasn’t
sure what the plan was. First things first, though.

“There’s nothing here for us, guys. You know what we
have to do. First things first, though. We need rest and resupply. Time to head
to the cache.”

We had spent last  summer building an extra
fortress, a “go to hell” meeting place about a mile away, built on the top of a
knoll, deep in the woods. Cinderblock walls, parapet and a small cabin inside
that could sleep six in bunks. Water supply from a hand pump-operated well, firewood
stockpiled, enough food for a year, extra ammo we had been stealing every
chance we got, replacement weapons that had been “destroyed or lost” on
previous missions. The only way in was through a tunnel covered by a grating
that had to be unlocked or an aluminum ladder buried in the wood a hundred
meters away.

We made a way slowly through the woods, keeping an
eye out for Zs that might have been attracted by the house being bombed. Only
one, the remains of an incredibly fat woman, missing an arm. She came stumbling
out of the woods, swinging her remaining arm at us. Jonesy swung his steel bar
at the things’ head, yelling, “THAT’S FOR MY XBOX!”  

Ahmed eyed him strangely. “She did not touch your Xbox!”

“I know, but I feel so much better now!”

While we rested at the fort, cleaning our weapons,
Doc tending to the various small injuries that crop up after being in the field
for a few days, I took stock of our situation and conferred with Ahmed. I sat
with my feet propped up on a bench.

“Those are nasty weapons, Nick.” He made a motion of
gagging. “Maybe you can march into the FOB and you can knock everyone dead from
the smell of your nasty feet.”

“Haha, very funny.” I continued drawing out a plan
of base in the dirt.

“The hard part, Nick, is we don’t really want to
shoot our way into the base. As much as I used to enjoy fighting you Americans
and the Taliban both, Allah has told me to kill Zombies. And bad guys, of
course. Those silly Fobbits do not deserve to die because their commander is an
ass.”

“I agreed, Ahmed. You’re forgetting something,
though. No one
knows
we are dead. I doubt LTC Jackass is going to run
around trumpeting he had us killed. In due course, I’m sure he’ll announce that
we were “lost” or something, but I bet he gives it a week or two. So, we can
just walk in the gate, but we will have to move fast.”

“No, that will not work, Nick. As soon as you come
in the gate, the base commander will be notified. Then we will be up shit’s
creek, because he will run, or have us arrested on some kind of made up charges.
Somehow.”

“Well, if we can get in touch with Brit, I’m sure
she can get us in somehow.”

I was waiting to hear from Brit. If we had gone off
the net or gone missing, she was under orders to call us at 1000 hours each day
on a predesignated freq. I hadn’t heard from her yet, but she could have been
fed a line of crap by the Chain of Command. It had been almost two weeks since
she had been wounded so I’m sure she was mobile around the hospital.

It took two more days to hear from her after we had
set up an OE-254 antenna to extend the range of the radios.

“Blue this is Red, over.”
That was her calling us. Nothing to give away anything, on the off chance anyone
was listening. We were using the team colors from Halo.

“Red, go.”

“Blue, you were reported dead. SITREP,
over.”

“Four pax OK, base gone. Break.”

“Need knock at Orange two days, over.”

I waited for her to figure it out. In two days, she
would have to help us get into Fort Orange.

“
Time, over”

“Fourteen, Moby, over”

“Fourteen, Moby out.”

OK, so it was cheesy code, but someone may have been
listening. Our electronic warfare assets were stretched thin, mostly down in
Mexico where the 82
^nd
was fighting for the oil fields. I was more
worried about someone at the commo shed overhearing Brit talking to us, so we
kept it short and coded.

“Fourteen” meant “1400 hours,” or 2 PM. She would
subtract twelve off of that to get the real time, or 2 AM. “Moby” meant “on the
south side of the base”. I had stolen it shamelessly from the Moby song
“Southside”. We had other code words for the cardinal directions, other things
we memorized. I was just glad she was doing well enough to help us out, and she
would
be coming out with us one way or another.

That afternoon, we moved back down to the river. Two
of us each hauled on steel cables that had been pegged to the river bottom in a
shallow area and pulled two fourteen foot aluminum canoes from the riverbed,
where we had sunk them with rocks. We flipped them over and cleaned out the mud
and silt that had accumulated over the last few weeks while we were gone, then
waited for night to descend on the river so we could start paddling downstream.

Chapter 26

Two days later found us lying in the mud of a
drainage ditch. Overhead, the stars blazed away like nothing I had ever seen
when the world was full of light. I watched the International Space Station
trace a slow arc overhead, an endless coffin, and thought of Brit. I wondered
if she would ever get to those stars.

Lying in drainage ditches in a post-Zombie world is
hard to do, because you never know what is lying in the ditch with you. We all were
tensed up, ready at any moment to grapple in a death grip with a zombie that
had been hiding under the leaves. Fortunately the area had been cleared pretty
well when the Army established Fort Orange. Still, it kinda made your balls
crawl up inside of you as you crawled along, poking in front of you with your
knife in one hand and your pistol in the other.  

The Fort itself was located at Albany Airport for use
of the runway, and the center of the base was the Joint Forces HQ of the New York
National Guard, a modern, two story building. The glass had mostly been
replaced by sandbags and a berm had been bulldozed around, with guard towers
every hundred meters or so. Impressive, until you realized how understaffed
Task Force Empire really was. The towers were often not even manned in the day
time,
just
supplemented by a roving patrol. After
the local area had been cleared, no one expected a zombie horde, and Firebase
Mohawk, located ten miles westward, could easily lay down an effective barrage
of BB rounds.  Around it had been cleared a good field of fire for three
hundred meters. Crossing it was going to be a problem, and I wasn’t sure how to
deal with it until I came across this ditch. We had been inching our way
through it for more than an hour, and we were now within a quick sprint of the
berm. That last stretch was going to be a bitch, since it was just under a
tower. What I was counting on was lax security and Brit. It had been more than
six months since there had been any incident around the Fort, except for
civilian survivors showing up at the gate every now and then. I had considered
trying to disguise ourselves and talk our way onto the base, but we were too
well-known. Instead, hopefully Brit was borrowing a little from the ancient Chinese
military genius Sun Tzu: “All warfare is deception.”

At 0221, an orange fireball climbed up into the sky
on the other side of the Airfield, followed by a thump that I felt in ground
before I heard it. Alarms started wailing, and I knew that attention would be
drawn there for the next twenty minutes or so. We waited past that time for
everything to calm down. After an hour, the adrenaline from the explosion wore
off and hopefully people got sleepy.

At 0325, we crawled slowly down the drainage ditch
to where it ran up to the berm. I heard voices in the tower above us. Brit had
come over to the base of the tower and was talking to the Fobbits on guard
duty. Most likely, one was asleep at this time, worn out by trying to watch in
the direction of the explosion, and the other was distracted by Brit. More likely,
there was only one on duty anyway. We snipped our way through the wire, threw a
blanket over the concertina wire and rolled over the berm, Doc pulling the
blanket after him. We crawled under a tent, one I knew contained spare supplies
and had no one in it. After fifteen minutes or so, Brit joined us.

I wrapped her in a bear hug and started to squeeze.
Damn, she felt good!

“Whoa, ow, ow, calm down there, Idiot! Surgery,
gunshot, hellloooo!” I put her carefully down and kissed her full on the lips.
She touched my unshaven face gently, then pushed me away and punched me as hard
as she could in the gut, right under the plate of my body armor. I doubled
over, and gasped out, “What the hell was that for?”

“For letting me get shot, you stupid ass. How does
it fraking feel, huh?” The guys were laughing as I tried to catch my breath. “Did
you like my little diversion? Rubber band around a grenade, put it inside a can
of diesel fuel earlier today. Not bad timing wise, if I do say so myself.”

“What did you say to get the tower guard’s
attention?”

“I told him I had the hots for him and made a date
for when he gets off shift in the morning. `Cause, you know, I’m EASY! Hell,
any piece of ass in this place could wrap this whole camp around her finger.”

After I recovered, we made our way casually through
the tents to the Officers’ trailer park. No one paid attention to us in the
dark. Doc and Ahmed had moved off to the motor pool to get us some
transportation, and I expected them along any minute.

We stopped around the corner from the Jackasses’ trailer,
and ducked down as a figure in PT uniform and shower shoes came down the
graveled walk, carrying a rifle and a towel and shining a flashlight on the
ground in front of him. As he passed us, Jonesy’s arm shot out and hit him on
the side of the head, knocking the figure out cold. Our old friend Sergeant
Major Peters.

“Pray for the right things, and the Lord will hear
you!” rumbled Jonesy, and he quickly stripped the SGM and left him lying butt-naked
on the ground, hog-tied with duct tape over his mouth. “Thank you, Jesus, for
happenstance! I hope the mosquitos eat him alive.”

“Are you done messing around?” I asked. Jonesy laughed
again. “After you, Nick.”

“Boys and their stupid games,” muttered Brit, but
she spit on the still-unconscious figure anyway, and kicked him once, hard,
with her combat boot, in the ribs.

We turned the corner, made sure the coast was clear,
and were about to kick the door in when it opened. A young female soldier
stepped out, kissed the Colonel, then walked away. I heard Brit mutter “rank
climber” under her breath. The Colonel stood in the doorway watching her go,
scratching himself. He went to shut the door, but a huge hand clad in a combat glove
stopped it.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed, and then my arm
wrapped around his neck in a sleeper hold. I choked him until he stopped
struggling, and we taped his mouth, zip tied his hands and feet and threw an
empty sandbag over his head. As we finished, Ahmed pulled up in a battered
HUMVEE. We slung jackass into the back, hid him under some tarps, and piled in.

At the front gate, we stopped for them to raise the
barrier. No one ever stopped anyone leaving the base. The Sergeant of the
Guard, an E-6 I knew pretty well, came over to me.

“Damn, Nick, I thought you guys were dead! Came by
to pick up Brit, huh? Glad she’s out of the hospital.”

“As Mark Twain once said, reports of our death have
been greatly exaggerated. We’re on our way south, start scouting for the push
downriver.”

“Well, you guys be safe out there. Shoot ‘em in the
head!”

“Always do, Sarge, always do!” Ahmed gunned the
engine, Jonesy spun the turret around to face forward, and we rolled out the
gate.  

Chapter 27  

We threaded our way down Route 7, swerving carefully
around the wrecked cars. This stretch wasn’t too bad, since it ran from one
populated area to another. No one was trying to get between those. The traffic
jams were bad just outside the small towns, when people realized that the
locals weren’t going to let them in or there was no gas for sale. Come into a
valley in front of a small town and there would be a pile up like you wouldn’t
believe. Many of the cars would have bullet holes in them too, where they tried
to run the barricades the locals had set up. 90% of the time they had to deal
with so many refuges that the locals ran out of ammo, and they couldn’t defend
themselves when a horde of Zombies came through. If they did admit refugees,
they quickly overwhelmed the resources of the town; anarchy set in with the
same result. Only here or there were towns and villages able to put up a
coherent defense and hold out, and even then many times starvation did them in,
a year later. Twelve months after the plague started, ninety percent of the east
coast was either infected or dead from violence and starvation.

We reached the bridge over the Hudson where the
highway turns into Hoosick Street, just as the sun was rising in the East. The
sky was light above the hills, but down in the river valley, it was still
covered in shadows. As we pulled up to the barricade that stretched across the
bridge, Jonesy let loose with a burst from the 240B machine gun in the turret to
call the Zombies, aiming it out over the water. The gunshots echoed through the
dead city on either side of the river, and immediately on the other side of the
barrier the Zombie moan started, first one, then more as they started to
stumble toward the sound of the shots. All along the Hudson, all the way down
the river to Newburgh, Army Engineers had built a barricade across each bridge,
a ten foot high barrier that stretched across the width of the bridge. There
was a lockable, heavy wooden gate that could be opened to let vehicles through,
and a ladder on either side that would allow people to climb up and over.
Sensors and cameras were embedded in the barrier to let the troops in the
Operations center know if anyone was passing through. These walls were put up
to keep the Zombies on the east side of the Hudson from crossing over to the west
side and re-contaminating any cleared areas. The same was true for the bridges
over the Mohawk River and just about any other major bridge. It was SOP for the
Army when they went in to clear an area. Either build it, or blow it, and
isolate an area. Zombies can cross water, but don’t like to, so rivers made a
great barrier to them.  

I jumped out and climbed the ladder, up into the
tower that overlooked the rest of the bridge, being careful to keep out of the
camera angles. There were a dozen Zs there already, and more were moving west
onto the bridge. Their red eyes glowed faintly in the shadow of the hills, and
that annoying, harsh moan was starting to get to me. It made me want to puke,
and my nerves were getting jangled. I yanked out the power cables that ran to
the solar collectors. Now no one was monitoring the bridge. In a couple of
hours, a patrol would come out by Humvee or chopper and find the damage, but we
had time. The monitors failed at a pretty good rate.

Brit was climbing down slowly from the truck. I
could see she was still hurting from her wound, and I didn’t want her to tear
any of her surgical staples. The sooner we got her back to a clean environment,
the better.

Ahmed was, as always, pulling security, looking back
down the highway to keep an eye on our rear. Doc and Jonesy hauled LTC Jackass
out of the back of the truck, dumping him roughly on the ground. I took his
hood off and ripped the tape from his mouth.
He
immediately started cursing all of us, telling us how he was going to have us
arrested, shot, thrown in Leavenworth.

I let him rant a little to remind me why we were
doing this. Then I pulled out my .22 pistol and pointed it at his face. That
shut him up, but I’ll give him credit. He pissed his pants again, but still
looked me in the eye. 

“Lieutenant Colonel MacDonald, you tried to kill me
and every member of my team. You were going to let Brit die. You bombed our
home. As far as I’m concerned, you are responsible for killing more than thirty
civilians when you shelled St. Johnsville, despite me telling you that there
were civilians
holed up there. You’re going
to do it again, next chance you get. All for your glory.”

He started to argue but I slapped tape back over his
mouth. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. Jonesy and I carried him up the
ladder, walked across the top of the wall, and dropped him into the waiting
arms of the Zombies. I’m not even sure he screamed.

“What, no long speech or convoluted plot to torture
LTC Jackass?” asked Doc.

I made a cutting gesture across my throat. “Screw
that. I hated those movies where you have someone in your sights, and you take
time to talk to them, or leave them tied up someplace to save them for later,
then they get away. As far as I’m concerned, you have a chance to kill someone who
needs killing, you go ahead and do it. Just like Captain Mal says.”

“Damn, Nick, you are one stone-cold prick. And you
gotta stop watching
Firefly
reruns,” said Jonesy.

“Jonesy, you weren’t there in St. Johnsville. I said
thirty civilians. It was adults and about twenty-five children, from what I
could tell from the amount of body parts. Kids. Toddlers. They’d held out for
almost two years, and fought so damn hard to protect those children. Along
comes that asswipe and he just levels the town. He had me arrested when I tried
to countermand his orders over the Fires Net.”

Below me, the Zs we gnawing on the still-struggling
LTC Jackass. He gave one last thrash, then died.  

“I had to go in there for “effects assessment”
because that asshole
had
to try out his new toys, see how well they did.
Do you know what a couple hundred steel bearings do to a three year-old?”

I leaned over and spit on the still corpse of LTC
Jackass, watching. I didn’t have long to wait. It struggled to stand,
collapsing on one chewed off leg. Funny, but as soon as you were dead, the Zs often
left you alone. It was as if they just wanted your life. That to me was even
scarier than them eating your brains.    

I leaned over and put two .22 rounds into the ranger
brush cut of the fresh Zombie and it crumpled to the ground.

“What the hell did you do that for?” asked Doc.

“I may be a prick, like Jonesy said, but I’m not that
much of a prick to leave him like that,” I said. “Next stop, Firebase
Benedict.”

We rolled south on Interstate 787, taking the lane
cleared by the Engineers. Occasionally we drove over a Zombie that had wandered
onto the highway. The truck had an inverted V of metal welded onto the front,
kinda like an old “cow catcher” that trains had on in the Old West. Hit a Z,
and it got tossed to one side.

Brit drove, happy to be doing something after being
confined to a hospital bed for more than two weeks. Every now and then she
would see a Z on the road ahead, stomp on the gas and swerve to hit it. One
splattered up and over the hood, spraying the windshield with blood. She
laughed hysterically and hit the wipers.

“What the F is wrong with you, woman?” I yelled,
trying to hold onto the radio mount so I didn’t get banged around. HUMVEE’s
aren’t full of soft round leather curves. They are full of sharp, metal angles
that will beat the crap out of you.

“I like to see them pop, and you gotta have some
speed or else they just get crumbly. Hit them hard enough, and they pop.” She
laughed maniacally, her deep, evil-villain laugh.

“You seriously need to get laid, woman!” yelled
Jonesy from up in the turret.

“Ya think? How about it, J, you and me? Once you go
white, you never go, ah... damn, nothing rhymes with white!”

“Where do I pick a number?”

“Get in line, Superstud.”

It was all good. My team was back together again.