Winter Apocalypse: Zombie Crusade V (20 page)

“What is it?” Hiram yelled.

“Two choppers, headed this way.”

Hiram didn’t need to ask if a horde of hunters was following the helicopters; every instinct he’d learned to rely on since the beginning of the outbreak was screaming a warning of approaching danger. “I’ll form up the troops. Good luck up there.”

“Be careful down there; and don’t worry about your flank.”

“So, Ms. Carrell, I hear you are a vegetarian. That just won’t do; we’re having Chicken Kiev tonight.” Barnes poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Andi. “Shall we toast to the valiant fighters defending their train in Iowa?”

Andi’s mind raced as she tried to figure out who might be in Iowa, but she managed to sound calm, “I don’t know anybody in Iowa, but if they’re fighting your infected I’m more than happy to salute them.” She tapped Barnes’ glass and downed her wine in one gulp.

Barnes looked at her quizzically and refilled her glass. “Perhaps you really don’t know that Jack and his friends are on their way back north, probably on their way to save Fort Wayne after it has already fallen.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.

Andi knew she should never trust anything that Barnes said, but it made sense that Jack and the others would try to get back to Indiana as quickly as possible once they heard that Fort Wayne was under attack. The key was “quickly” – an army of soldiers would likely travel by train, but Jack had helicopters at his disposal. She hoped that since Barnes was obviously lying about Jack, maybe he was lying about everything. “So you’re trying to tell me that Jack is on a train somewhere in Iowa, under attack by one of your hunter armies? I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very probable.”

“You don’t think he’d rush to try to rescue his precious settlement?” He sounded like a confrontational professor, drilling one of his graduate students.

She decided that honesty was the best policy at this point in the game. “No, I think that sounds like Jack, but I don’t think that a train would be his method of rushing.”

Barnes leaned back with a smug expression on his face. “Well-reasoned, Ms. Carrell. So just who do you suppose would be on that train?”

“I wouldn’t know for sure, but I expect they’re people I’ve fought with, maybe people I consider friends. Why do you enjoy cruelty so much, General Barnes?”

“It’s President Barnes, and I don’t enjoy cruelty. I do enjoy power, and I won’t apologize for that. I enjoy winning. Don’t you enjoy winning, Ms. Carrell?”

“Not at the expense of others; not if it hurts people. I really don’t understand how you can be the cause of so much suffering and not feel any regret at all.”

“You’re right; you don’t understand. I have saved our species and our planet. Those who resist me are the cause of their own destruction.” Barnes stared into Andi’s eyes. “I have the power of life and death over everyone you love, my dear. How does that make you feel?”

Andi felt physically cold and emotionally terrified, but she didn’t want to give Barnes the satisfaction of seeing her suffer. She leaned forward and took a sip of her wine. “I feel like you just proved my point about how you enjoy cruelty. And I do find some satisfaction in being right. How does that make you feel?”

Barnes threw his head back and laughed heartily as a well-dressed young man wheeled in a tray with their meal. “You have given me something to think about, Ms. Carrell. I do appreciate that. I will tell my troops to put a quick end to your friends in Iowa, so they won’t suffer. Now that really is the kindest thing I could do for them.” He bowed slightly. “Excuse me while I make that call. When I get back you can let me know how you like the chicken. I know
you’re
not used to eating flesh.”

As the waiting soldiers shivered in the cold wind, Hiram and Stanley realized they had made a mistake in ordering the troops into their fighting positions at the first sight of the Blackhawks. In the frigid, post-storm, clear-blue sky, the choppers had been miles away when spotted. The horde they were leading would have to struggle through snow drifts, and the random detritus of the apocalypse now hidden by a fluffy, white blanket. The afternoon was fading into evening, and the helicopters were still half a mile away. Hiram had eventually decided to allow most of the fighters to stand down and build fires, so the soldiers were fed, and many had even found time for short naps as they waited for their enemy to appear. The most dangerous consequence of the miscalculation by the commanders was that the defensive preparations could have continued for hours, and since they hadn’t, a blood-price would almost certainly be extracted when the battle commenced.

Finally, the first of the hunters appeared on the horizon, and after a few minutes of observation, the officers could see that the creatures coming toward them were the usual, well-evolved flesh eaters they had been fighting for the past several months. As the monsters came closer, everyone saw that there were thousands of the beasts, maybe more than ten thousand, but the best of them were leading the charge. The brutes trudging along behind were an odd assortment of infected in various stages of development.

Hiram lowered his binoculars and shouted at Stanley. “If that was a human army, their commander would use the riff-raff to wear us down before sending in the best troops.”

“Yeah,” Stanley yelled over the sound of the Blackhawks now just a few hundred meters away. “But we’ll be wore out by the time the infected shuffle in, so they’ll still be dangerous.”

Their conversation was abruptly ended by a chorus of howls to the north, as the leading hunters finally saw prey for the first time since their long trek had begun. The creatures were hungry, very hungry, and a lot of humans were standing in the snow, seemingly there for the taking. The monsters increased their efforts to charge through the snow, and the strongest of the beasts soon made contact with the front line of soldiers, all of the fighters eager to get this over with and climb back into the train.

Stanley watched this beginning stage of the battle with a mixture of revulsion and admiration. His Utah allies were seasoned veterans, survivors of many brutal fights with the best killers the enemy could send at them. The westerners efficiently and violently cut down every hunter that reached their lines for the first ten minutes, but then the usual series of events began to erode the cohesion of their formation. The hunters were powerful and athletic, and when being led by the helicopters, downright suicidal. Eventually, a spear thrust would miss as a particularly nimble flesh-eater would leap up and over the first rank. Knives and axes would come out to end the wrestling match taking place as the monster tried to find flesh with its hands and teeth, and then, by sheer luck or coincidence, or worse, recognition of opportunity by the following hunters, more of the creatures would leap toward the scrum. Most of the time the beasts were quickly killed and the lines restored, but inevitably, if enough flesh-eaters pressed the attack, one of these minor breaches would become a break in the formation.

In this battle, that event occurred quickly due to a combination of tired soldiers and a simply massive number of hunters. Stanley turned from the scene to help his own troops, who were now coming under a determined assault by flesh-eaters being pushed around the side of the boxcars by the creatures massed against the humans on the ground. The Hoosiers had a tremendous advantage in fighting from the top of the train, and the countless hours of training they’d endured over the summer ensured that most of their spear-thrusts were deadly. The snow below the fighters quickly turned into black-red mush from the sheer volume of blood they were spilling, but, as usual, mounds of corpses were beginning to pile up against the wall presented by the sides of the boxcars. Stanley knew that eventually, if there were enough hunters in the army they were facing, the beasts would begin to use those piles of bodies to climb toward the soldiers. That’s when he’d start to lose people.

Hiram’s force was already taking casualties, most of the score or so killed as the besieged troops conducted their withdrawal to the second tier of their man-made snow-hill. Hundreds of hunter-corpses were heaped into gory mounds in front of the first line the soldiers had defended, but thousands more were eagerly pushing forward to join the attack. Hiram now realized a fatal flaw in the defense plans he and Stanley had prepared: no line of retreat. There was no way for the great majority of his fighters to climb back into the boxcars; only two of them were anchoring their line. The Hoosiers fighting on top of the train had hatches they could use to slip down into the relative protection of the cars, but if they were under serious pressure few of them would survive the attempt. No, there would be no retreat from this battle; it would be a fight to the death.

CHAPTER 18

Brittany and Roberto had asked Jack if they could speak with him for a few minutes alone, and they’d shared a story that Jack wasn’t sure he should take at face value.

“So, you’re absolutely certain that this ‘Doug’ character said Barnes is using boats to move the infected?” Jack was finding the details in the story of the fight along the St. Clair River to be more of a distraction than he needed at the moment. With most of his people still freezing on the Maumee, the last thing he wanted to deal with right now was trying to figure out some sort of conspiracy involving the infected on ships.

“And don’t forget the part about Barnes planning to attack islands in the Great Lakes,” Roberto added.

Jack bit his lip and shook his head with a mixture of disbelief and frustration. “You’re doubly certain on that point?”

Brittany and Roberto were anxious to find their beds and try to erase the horrors they’d witnessed during their escape from the marina, but they wanted to make certain that Jack and the others understood the possibility of a new threat to their tenuous security.

“Jack,” Brittany fought to keep the exasperation from her voice, “Doug knifed Bruce in cold blood, then he held the Canadians at gunpoint and tried to kidnap Carolyn. He was definitely a bad guy, and he told them he worked for President Barnes.”

“I know he was a bad guy,” Jack agreed, “so why would you assume that he was telling the truth about who he was working for? And if he was working for Barnes, why would he let strangers know what the general is up to?”

“The dude showed up after a ship full of the infected crashed into the marina,” Roberto countered. “There were hundreds of ‘em on that ferry. His story makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does, but I really thought Barnes had put everything he had into the Vicksburg campaign. Then we found out about the attack in Indiana . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off.

Brittany draped a blanket around Jack’s shoulders. “You look tired, Jack. When’s the last time you got any sleep?”

Jack took a good look at Brittany, “Probably about the same time you did.”

The young woman laughed bitterly. “I’m sort of afraid to close my eyes; there are things I don’t ever want to see again. And I’m worried about Red.”

Roberto sighed. “He knows how to take care of himself. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Even in Jack’s fatigued condition, he could tell that Roberto wasn’t pleased with the prospect of Red Heder’s safe return. He didn’t want to mention his own concerns about Lieutenant Heder, so he decided to dismiss the two young fighters. “You said you haven’t had a minute to yourselves since you got back. Go shower and at least try to grab some shut-eye. Let me know if you remember any new details that might be important, and I’ll make sure you know when Red and the others arrive.” Jack planned on having a personal audience with Heder as soon as he landed, before anyone else had a chance to distract him.

Roberto wasted no time in exiting the room as quickly as possible, but Brittany hesitated for a moment before putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “David and the rest of his group are gonna be pretty upset to learn about Father O’Brien; break the news as gently as you can. And I’m really sorry about Andi.”

For a moment, Jack considered what Brittany had suffered through today. She had lost the priest, whom she obviously adored, her boyfriend was still in harm’s way out on the river, and the guy who’d saved her and her sister just a few months earlier was dying in Vicksburg. “How old are you, Brittany?” he gently asked.

“Not old enough for this crap.”

“No,” Jack quietly agreed. “Nobody is.”

“I’m twenty-years-old, why?”

He shook his head and frowned before answering. “I wish you were still in college, and your sister in high school, maybe with Luke and Gracie . . .”

Brittany shrugged as she headed for the door. “We already graduated, Jack, from UZA.”

She laughed at his puzzled expression before explaining, “University of the Zombie Apocalypse. I was Magna Cum Laude.”

Jack’s laugh was music to her ears as she walked out into the freezing wind, helping her believe, that at least for a precious moment, she’d eased some of the burden weighing down the great Jack Smith.

By midnight, Christy’s prediction time for the fleet’s arrival in Maumee Bay had proven correct. After checking in with a few of the refugees who’d been delivered to Middle Bass after his arrival, Jack was able to relax a slight bit, but he would have preferred long-range radio contact with his allies. He wished he knew what was going on with Luke—by now his son was surely dead, but Jack wouldn’t accept it until he heard from Vicksburg. He hoped that by this time tomorrow he’d feel confident in the safety of his people and be able to fly back to Mississippi. If Rickers and Hiram were successful in recapturing Fort Wayne, they might find the radio undamaged; there was still a chance that communications with Vicksburg might be reestablished and Jack wouldn’t need to return to the south any time soon. More than anything, he wished there was something he could do about Andi.

He was definitely anxious to speak with Lieutenant Heder and learn the details of how Barnes’ troops were able to pluck Andi out of Fort Wayne during a chaotic evacuation in the middle of a blizzard. Jack could think of nothing to do for his fiancé. He had no idea where the soldiers had taken her, and if Barnes didn’t know her relationship with Jack, he didn’t want to give it away by trying to establish contact with the mad general. No, all he could do was wait.

In the gathering twilight Stanley could see that the end of the horde was in sight. He estimated that there had indeed been about ten thousand flesh eaters sent against the train by the Blackhawks that now hovered a quarter-mile away, but there were far fewer than that still on their feet. The soldiers had slaughtered the hunters and infected that had attacked through the late afternoon, but the toll on their own ranks had been disastrous. This was a fight that didn’t have to happen. There was no strategic, or even tactical, advantage in holding this position. While the thought behind the decision to make a stand had seemed logical at the time, nobody had considered the possibility that the stray helicopters could gather so many flesh-eaters in such a rural area. The humans could have retreated and lived to continue the struggle another day, for a more worthy objective. With the mauling they were taking here, retreat back to Vicksburg would be their only option, if any of them survived the battle.

The Hoosier contingent had suffered a handful of fighters killed, pulled from their perch by hunters reaching up from atop the mounds of their own dead. Six soldiers had been sent down into the boxcars with a mixture of fractures, sprains and concussions. Other than that, the veterans from Indiana were holding their position. Stanley had stepped away from the fighting line to see how the action on the ground was going, and as he guzzled a large bottle of water he saw that the situation on the snow-mound was now desperate. At least half the westerners were missing from the formation, though how many were dead, or simply evacuated to the train with wounds, was impossible to determine.

Hiram was standing in the front line, distinguishable by the unique helmet he wore. The headgear was a gift from Jack, a cherry-red motorcycle helmet with Kevlar neck-protection added on. The Utah commander was swinging a battle-axe, as virtually all of the westerners had lost their spears earlier in the fight. As Stanley watched, he saw Hiram chop his blade into the side of a hunter’s head, blood and grey-matter spraying into the fading light to the west as the monster fell into a huge pile of dead in front of the warrior’s position. Another creature went down before the singing axe, but this time the blade stuck in the monster’s skull and the weapon was pulled from Hiram’s grasp as the mortally stricken beast collapsed. The rapidly tiring leader unsheathed his short sword and began thrusting the razor-sharp tip into the faces of his attackers, most of whom were now of a lesser quality than the fully developed hunters who’d led the attack. Half a dozen creatures fell to Hiram’s blade, but finally, when the men on his flanks went down under mobs of infected, the brave commander was overwhelmed.

Stanley had fought for Jack and Carter since the first days of the outbreak, and he needed every ounce of the training they’d instilled in him to not immediately jump onto the mound and try to rescue his friend. Every fighter still alive in North America knew that rescue attempts only led to breaks in the line, and further losses. Sometimes soldiers fought their way out from under mobs of infected, and everyone carried several small knives tucked in easy-to-reach places on their armor for just such an emergency. The discipline of the Utah battalion held up despite the loss of their commander, and the ranks squeezed even more tightly together as they retreated to the last tier on their mound.

A ghastly semi-circle of corpses piled waist-high and nearly twenty meters deep surrounded the remnants of the formation. The final waves of attackers were made up of the slower infected, and Stanley realized that the pressure on his troops had significantly decreased. He decided to break the rules. He called several of his squad leaders over and asked for volunteers to try a rescue attempt for Hiram and anyone else who might still be alive under the infected mobs writhing above their prey. As soon as he had ten soldiers willing to help, they lowered themselves down into the sea of corpses and slowly crawled toward the last place Hiram had been standing.

The remaining infected were focused on the troops holding the mound, so few attacks were launched against the rescue party. When the flesh-eaters did come after the Hoosiers, the men instantly cut them down with contempt and continued on their mission. As they reached the mound still frantically trying to tear Hiram apart, the soldiers quickly hacked and stabbed their way through the mob and found that the Utah commander was still alive. He was even feebly stabbing at his attackers with one of his short knives. With the threat to Hiram now eliminated, the rescuers turned their attention to several nearby piles of infected and freed two more westerners. One was dead, from either suffocation or a broken neck. The other was too exhausted to stand, but appeared to have suffered no bite-wounds.

Hiram wasn’t so lucky. The flesh-eaters had found openings in his armor between his gloves and coat, and above his right boot. His exposed flesh had been savaged by the frenzied infected. Stanley ordered his friend carried into the boxcars, where the bleeding could be stopped, but he knew the brave fighter was a goner. He wasn’t alone. As the last of the monsters were being put down, Stanley saw that less than half of the Utah battalion was still standing, and he figured that he’d lost at least ten percent of the Hoosiers under his command. That any of them had survived such a massive attack under these terrible conditions was unbelievable; he’d never witnessed such a heroic last stand. Even during the most dire moments in the Battle of Vicksburg, everyone had known the wall was still defending the civilians, and they could retreat to the barges waiting to take them out onto the river if necessary. Here, it was kill them all or die, and they’d killed them all. Unfortunately, a great many soldiers had died in this place as well. If many more such Pyrrhic victories were waiting for them in the future, Stanley thought, the human race was doomed.

Jack had managed to get a few hours of fitful rest when word came that the first boats from Fort Wayne were in sight. By the time Christy and David pulled in to the dock, Jack could see the last of the forty or so watercraft heading his direction in the pinkish morning light. He wondered which one held Lieutenant Heder, and he wasn’t happy about the growing crowd populating the shoreline behind him. He didn’t want any competition for Heder’s attention when the young man finally arrived.

“Hey, Jack,” David called out to his brother, “give us a hand over here!”

Jack sprinted to his brother’s side and grunted when he caught the heavy duffel bag David tossed his way. “What took you so long? Christy get you guys lost?” he teased.

Christy grabbed Jack and wrapped him in a bear hug. “It’s good to see you too, Jack.” She stepped back and looked around the dock, “Where’s Father O’Brien? I thought he’d be here. Are the Canadians here?”

Before Jack could reply, Brittany was by his side. Christy screeched and pulled her in for a hug as well. “Good to see you, sweetie—did you go on the trip with Father O’Brien? Does he know we’re here?”

The expression on Brittany’s face tempered Christy’s enthusiasm. “You have bad news?”

Brittany was trying hard not to cry, but she wasn’t successful. “He’s at peace now, Christy. The trip didn’t go so well; Father O’Brien and our pilot, Bruce, didn’t make it.”

David had joined Christy on the dock, and she slumped against her husband. “I’m so sorry, Brittany,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for all of us.”

Brittany nodded as she wiped away her tears. “I really do think he is at peace, with his family. He said he saw them, at the end.” She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “And he was super excited about your cousin. He said that meeting Michael Carboni helped bring peace to his soul.”

“What?” David couldn’t quite believe his ears. “You actually met Christy’s cousin, Michael?”