Zombie Dawn (31 page)

Jim came back on a few minutes later.  “We’ve got it under control here.  Sean poured about a thousand gallons of diesel down there and lit it up with phosphorous grenades.  He saved our asses.  The cave is quiet and I don’t see any more ultralights.  The Fort is secure.”

“Okay.”
            I quickly called over to Mickey to blow the boat and all of the explosives on the east side.  Then I radioed Cam to blow the south-side explosives, since the enemy was massing on the shore and starting to cross over the ice, which had frozen over.  I told Cam to send Sharon over and bring Christina back to the fort and ordered everyone else back there except for Cleve.

I called him on the radio.  “You ready to go out with a bang!”

“As agreed, boss.  I’ll see you at the bunker.”

One night weeks ago Cleve and I had stayed up on an all night drunk.  Cleve had realized that the Fort was not ready for an all-out frontal assault yet.  There were multiple weak points, which Cleve showed me on a model he’d built.  We’d spent some time working on the weak points but the Fort just wasn’t ready.  Cleve and I had decided that we had to thin out the main force before it even approached the Fort because otherwise the Fort was a goner .  We also agreed to keep it quiet because we didn’t want to panic everyone.  They’d fight better if they thought the Fort was safe.

So Cleve and I had built our special bunker and added some additional defenses and features into it.  We planned to fight to the death but we’d build a final lockbox deep under the bunker to hide in if we were overrun.  Just to give us some hope.  Like when they give a couple of guys in a firing squad a blank in their weapon.

I called Jim on the field telephone.  “Jim, you’re in charge of the Fort.  Get everyone back there and prepare to defend it.  The horde is coming.”

“Did the explosives work?”

            “Sort of.  We’re safe on the east for now.  There’s a huge gap in the ice over there.  A bunch fell in but the rest started south.   Most of the stuff to the south didn’t work so there’s a bridge about ten or twenty feet wide that they can cross on foot.  I don’t think they could get tanks or vehicles over.  In fact, I think Tom blew their only tank.”

            “Where are you?  When will you be back here?”

            “I’m not coming back.  Cleve and I are going to thin them out a bit before they get there.  It’s the only way.”

            “You asshole.  You had this planned all along.”

            “Jim, it had to be done.  We have an awesome position here and I think we can hammer them enough so that you can finish them off up there.  I’m also going to try and cut the ice bridge.  Take care of Bobbie and Sean and make sure the Farm survives.”

            “Okay, hero.  Try and stay alive.”

            “You bet.  Over for now.”

            Cleve and I turned our attention to the south.  The horde extended for as far as the eye could see all along the southern coast in dense ranks.  They’d put the regular zombies out front and were forcing them ahead over the ice.  Many of them were falling into the water, because the ice bridge was narrow.  But thousands and thousands were getting across the bridge and thousands more were already shambling north towards the fort.

            We had extensively mined, wired, and booby trapped the entire area.  The road was the only way through the field.  It was blocked with a wall of dead zombies.  It’s hard to explain how, but the zombies just kept coming through and over the mines and wires.  Sure, we blew them to hell but they just kept moving forward, pushed from the rear.

            Barbed wire was almost useless.  It delayed them a bit but they’d simply trample the ranks caught in it until they could clamber over.

Same with Claymores.  Even if a Claymore took out twenty of them, they just kept coming.  They had more bodies than we had Claymores.

            We’d built a few big, deep tiger traps, booby trapped with explosives.  They literally filled them up with bodies and kept coming.

            Cleve and I realized that our only hope was to blow the ice bridge.  Each of us zeroed in until we were right on it and finally we were able to cut it, at least temporarily.  Cleve guesstimated that at least 30,000 zombies had gotten over before we cut it and that we’d probably only gotten 5,000 with our traps and explosives.

            Cleve opened up with a .50 cal machine gun.  I fed while he fired.  We had two of them set up so we’d let one barrel cool and switch to the other.  We scythed them down by the hundreds.  Every once in a while we’d switch over to mortars and grenade launchers.  All of it worked but great, but they kept coming.

            “Cleve, I see some soldiers and some Leaders over to the west about five hundred yards out.  Can you get them from here?”

            “Sure can.”

Cleve pulled up the .50, moved it a bit, and opened up on the command group.  Direct hits on all of them.  The zombies around them slowed a bit but the rest kept coming.

I noticed that Jim had not obeyed my orders and had set up at least six mortar teams, who were pouring accurate fire into the horde.  I estimated that each round killed or incapacitated at least a dozen and that each mortar fired about six times per minute.  That was less than a thousand per minute.  We were running out of time.

I decided to see what they were up to on the other side of the bridge.  I set up my Barrett .50 while Cleve kept hacking away on the .50 machine gun.  I noticed that many of the soldiers and Leaders were out in the open, some watching and others trying to build bridges and launch boats.  I told Cleve to spray the boats with the .50 while I lined up individual shots on Leaders and soldiers.

Big bunches of Wolves and Brains had been mixed in with the masses, and they flanked our bunker and raced towards the Farm.   I telephoned Jim and advised him to pull his mortar teams back and prepare for attack.  A few more minutes and the bulk of the surviving horde had passed by the bunker.  We could no longer see anything from the bunker because of the stacks of dead zombies, some as close as twenty yards out.  Cleve and I, with the help of Jim’s mortars, had killed thousands upon thousands, but plenty were left.

Cleve and I had weeded out the horde to the point where we thought the Fort would survive.  No one was shooting at us, so we moved the .50s to the roof of the bunker and attacked from the rear.   We were really ripping them up.

We had totally forgotten about the sniper across the bridge.  The guy was deadly accurate, but had shut things down for a minute.

A minute or two after Cleve opened up, his head simply exploded from behind.  I rolled off the roof and took cover as a second shot landed where I’d been a second before.  Based on the angle of the shots, I figured out where the sniper had to be and put my scope on him.  There was something familiar about him, something about the way he wrapped his left hand around the forestock.  He saw me scoping him and rolled behind a barrier.  No shot.

Just then, a group of Brains and Wolves that were driving the mob from behind spotted me and raced towards me.  All I had was my .45 and I opened up on them but I knew I was dead.  There were simply too many left.  I ran through all of my magazines and, when I was out, grabbed a shovel and prepared for my last stand.

The Brains decided to play with me and sent in Wolves two at a time to torment me.  After a bit, they realized that I could easily take two at a time with the shovel so they sent in groups of three.  I had finished off a couple of trios when they sent in a group of five.  I figured that was it and readied my shovel for a final swing or two.  Fuck it. Kate was gone, Mike was gone.  I was ready.

Just as they were about to reach me I heard the sound of galloping horses and rifle fire.  I’d been sort of thinking about Custer’s last stand and I figured my mind had finally blown out.  The last thing I saw before I went down was Jim and Bobbie riding double on a horse and leading another.  Bobbie was in the saddle and Jim was shooting my .45 Tommygun.  He threw me over the other horse and we took off. 

When we got back to the Fort, Stan had things pretty well under control and they were mopping up.  It was over.

Chapter Forty Eight:  Next Stage

That night, I loaded up my weapons and a few supplies and left the Farm at 3:00 a.m.  I had left notes for Jim, Bobbie, and Sean.  I knew Jim would take care of them, and everyone else at the Farm.  He was in charge.

But I had to go.  It had finally come to me in my sleep.  I knew why the sniper seemed familiar.  It was Mike.  Kate was alive, or Mike never would have fired on us.  I had to get Kate and Mike.

The End