Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (28 page)

Between his introspection and handing out orders, the fastest
elements of the tide had crossed to about the midpoint of the field.

“Close the gate,” he shouted down to the team in
charge of that. In moments the heavy door began to creak its way
across the road into town. When sealed, they would be surrounded on
all sides by a steep levee, and a moat. Essentially they’d
become a medieval fortress town.

The modern steel of the Abrams and Bradley’s was welcome,
but he feared the real battle would be won or lost by Chloe and her
teams of spear-builders. Yesterday he’d tasked her with arming
the citizens in any way they could, and it was decided that since
guns were scarce in the town thanks to the former mayor, they would
have to depend on spears and other hand-held weapons.

This is exactly like a medieval battle.

If they had more time, they could have killed deer for sinew and
crafted bows from local trees. They could have fashioned stakes to
skewer the approaching zombies. Maybe they’d have had time to
build catapults. Then the similarities to those ancient battles would
have been complete.

Even now a gaggle of teenaged boys traipsed across a field in the
town, heading for him on the levee. They carried metal poles—Chloe
had delivered for him.

He recognized the fear on their faces, even from such a distance.

It was the same fear he kept hidden from his own.

2

“How did it come to this? Why are they all coming here?”
Tom—his longtime friend and aid—asked.

“Elsa said it was because of the rivers. They wandered out
from Chicago and Indy, hit the rivers, and found their way here.”

“So are these from Chicago or Indianapolis?”

“Who knows. It doesn’t matter. They’re here,
now.”

The two Abrams tanks had come up the ramp and were in the process
of getting into position on opposite ends of the levee. There was a
lot of ground to cover—about a mile. He sent the two Bradley’s
to the far end where the levee bowed north a little. They would fire
their M242's almost sideways, along the frontage of the ditch. His
hope was they would catch the zombies before they could fall into the
waterway and clog it up.

That effort will fail.

For all his planning, he knew how it would end. That’s why
he tried to stay in the moment. He wanted to do the best he could in
the time he had.

“The Humvees will stay in the middle. I want them to spray
that bridge over the ditch, Tom. Let them know.” The ditch
started from an existing waterway which channeled water away from the
levee frontage. It was now several times wider, and much deeper. He
didn’t have the resources to blow the one stout bridge over it.

Tom, holding the radio, sent the message. The trucks had been
waiting on the ramp up, and now sprang to action with their orders.
When he was done, they both watched the dance.

“I wish I had air power. That’s one thing Elsa took
from us that we can’t duplicate.”

“Maybe we should have tethered men in balloons out in that
field. It would have distracted those things from coming here,”
Tom said with a touch of regret.

“We could have used little blimps with fresh meat hanging
from them, and walked those zombies right into the rivers. Tom,
you’re a genius!” John replied, though he wasn’t
serious. He didn’t have balloons, blimps, or bloody meat. But
something that simple could have helped them.

Tom, rising to the challenge, continued. “We could have
built more ditches. Maybe put some bungee sticks at the bottom. Or,
maybe we dump glue out there, so they all get stuck. Or—”

“Glue?” John said thoughtfully.

“As if, huh?”

"Yeah," he said with distraction. He didn't want to fix
himself and his people to this levee, or this town if he could help
it.

He looked at the sky, then grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper. He
scribbled something down, and handed it to Tom. The other man looked
at it grimly, then pocketed it.

“Find me one of those and you’ll be the hero of
Cairo.”

"You want me out of the battle?"

"I want you here, but need you there," he said while
pointing at the paper. "I think that's where we're going to end
up."

"I'll be as fast as I can." Tom smiled, then began his
jog down the ramp, off the levee. Before he got too far he stopped
and turned around. “Good luck, sir.” He snapped a salute,
then kept going.

“Everyone has their mission,” he said quietly while
looking at the creeping mass of death as it continued to slither
across the miles of farmland to his north.

Men and women from the town streamed up the ramp, taking their
place on top of the levee. Many were there to watch, he was
disappointed to see, but he wouldn’t ask them to leave. Much
like the early Civil War battle at Bull Run, the citizens had to see
firsthand what this new type of warfare would entail. It would either
send them screaming, or harden their souls so they could do what was
needed to survive.

Others were there to fight. Some had guns. Too few. Many of the
others carried shovels, hoes, and sharp sticks. One older black woman
had a bright yellow broom handle that had a deadly point on one end.
The broom’s bristles were still attached to the other.

The teens with the metal spears made it close to the top of the
levee, though they stood on the backside, as if unwilling to face the
menace they knew was over the top. So much like every young man in
every war ever fought. They would fit into any of the eternal
PowerPoint slideshows on morale and new recruits he’d endured
over his career.

“You boys! Over here. Front and center.” Though he
wasn’t dressed like a general, his voice carried the order and
pulled them over to him.

When they were standing a few feet away, he saw their eyes were
universally sucked out to sea, at the black tide seeping in. There
wasn’t much he could say about that.

“I see you’ve got your spears. Did Miss Chloe make
those for you?”

The three boys seemed to silently defer to each other for who
would respond. Finally, a teen boy that could have been a football
star in a past life began. “No, sir. Chloe has a team working
with construction materials, but she insisted we all learn how to cut
our own. We made these spears.”

His trust in Chloe was well placed.

“That’s excellent. After today, you will need to know
those skills so you can take care of your own families. Your own
towns. This is the JV match.”

The lie sailed off his tongue like the catapult he wished he had.
He wanted them to feel confident heading into this fight, and parsing
it in their own language seemed appropriate. The truth, in this
instance, would only send them to an early grave. And then he’d
have to put them down, too.

One of the other boys spoke up. Looking at the trio, they all
could have been high school athletes. “A man showed us how to
fight with this,” he held up his sharpened rebar spear, “so
we can thrust it into the zombies' brains and yank it back out.”

Each piece of rebar was about two feet long but had a six-inch
right hook at the base. The boys showed him how they would hold the
base, point the thing kind of like a gun, and then drill it into the
head of the enemy combatants. They explained that the natural
serrations of the steel rods would keep them from getting stuck
inside…

The boy’s faces paled as they discussed the implications of
how it could get stuck.

“Don’t worry about it, men. These aren’t people
anymore—”

So help me God, they can’t be.

“—they're the undead. Our loved ones are gone. These
things are just the disease walking their bodies around, as the
ultimate insult to you, to me, and everyone who loved the people they
were. You will be doing the greatest service to humanity by putting
them out of their misery.”

It was as close as he’d come to a pep talk. And it was only
for the three boys in his earshot. But he was pleased to see it
seemed to work. They visibly gripped their spears tighter and patted
each other on the back as a show of mutual support. They
even—almost—looked at the dark wave without flinching.

He hadn’t created unthinking fighting machines with his few
words—he would need weeks of basic training to take an honest
crack at that—but he’d given them a bit more courage than
they had when they walked up the hill. That would have to be enough.

3

It wasn’t long before the first shots barked out from the
big dogs. The Bradley’s on the far end were putting rounds on
target. The small arms fire of rifles and shotguns was constant
background noise he didn’t even notice anymore. It just always
chattered away, somewhere.

Though the dark waters were filling the fields in front of him,
the fact was zombies had been hitting his line almost continuously
for weeks. Sometimes singly, but often in small groups. A few times
they’d had major assaults, as on the night he was tossed in the
ditch. A small part of his mind wondered if the zombies ebbed and
flowed here based on his own drama. First, they rose up when he was
in danger from traitors. Now, they were attacking to test his mettle
at defending Cairo on his terms.

Am I being tested?

There was no more time for introspection. He got into his Humvee
and prepared to lead his men and women into battle. He eyed the
radio, wondering if some signals intelligence shop was listening in.
Maybe this battle would be recorded and studied by future
warfighters, in a new West Point.

“Warfighters? Why not?”

In a few minutes, he had assigned call signs to all his
equipment—all ten pieces. Two Abrams, Two Bradley’s, and
six Humvees, including his own. He was Warfighter. The others were
simply named Alpha 1 and 2, Bravo 1 and 2, and so on. He had no
recon, no heavy weapons platoons, no foot soldiers to speak of,
besides the townsfolk. They were outside his radio net and had no
real leader besides himself.

He hopped back out of the truck and found the three boys. They
were crouched low on the military crest of the levee—not that
they knew the term—while waiting for the battle to begin.

“You three!”

When they saw him, they came over again, as if knowing they were
wanted.

“Please tell me one of you young men was a quarterback in
high school,” he said grimly.

One of them stepped up, though with hesitation. “I wasn’t
a starter, but I can throw the ball.”

“That’s not what I need, son. I need a leader. Someone
who can take my orders—I’m the QB today—and tell my
soldiers what to do. Think you can handle that? You three are going
to be my runners, making you the most important pieces of my battle
plan.”

He thought this was the time they’d either sack up or
whither away.

“You can count on us, sir,” said the backup QB.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Tyler, sir. And this is Xander and Rando.” He
gestured to the other two in turn.

“Excellent. You’ll each have a zone.” He pointed
to the western Abrams tank, still adjusting itself far down the
levee. “Xander, you’ll be down there.” He pointed
to the eastern end. “Rando, you’ve got that end. And
Tyler, you’ve got the middle. I’m counting on you, as
that’s where the battle will be won or lost.”

“What do you want us to do,” Tyler asked with a hint
of fear.

“Don’t worry about that. You just do what I say, and
everything will be fine. Just hang out right next to my truck and
I’ll send you with orders soon enough.”

He motioned Tyler to follow him to his open door. The voices on
the radio were still calm and collected, which was good.

“I want you to get over to that crowd of spectators. I want
them off the top of the levee, but they can watch from the backside.
I need to have room to drive my vehicles back and forth on this
road.” He studied the boy’s face to see how he would
handle the necessary task. “And when you’ve got that
done, I want you to find another boy and ask him to find Chloe,
wherever she’s making spears, and tell her to get moving. We’re
out of time.”

“Go!”

The salute was clumsy, but he returned it. His snap judgment was
that Tyler would serve him well.

“Xander and Rando, up front.”

The boys ran to him.

“You two sound like professional wrestling names. You’re
not wrestlers, are you?”

Two head shakes.

“I need each of you to go to that group of townies—my
foot soldiers—and get five or six of them to go stand near each
tank. Their jobs are to keep the people away, so the tanks don’t
run them over, but eventually, they might be called upon to defend
each tank from the zombies.”

The implications were clear and damning. It was an admission of
the outcome of the battle, even before it began.

“You have a problem?”

The two boys shared a look but said nothing. They shook their
heads no.

“This is war. I need you two out there helping me. We all
have to contribute.”

He considered doubling up on the pressure for them, making them
feel key to the whole victory, but in the balancing act between
spurring them to action or making them soil their pants, he stuck
with the former. They would either figure it out, or they wouldn’t.

As they ran off, a black man in a green John Deere Gator rolled
up. Marty Peters sat next to him. A tiny woman holding on for dear
life to the side rail, clearly uncomfortable.

He jumped out to greet her.

“Come to watch the show?”

To watch me?

“Oh, my lands, no. But Duncan insisted. And he’s my
ride.”

“She’s too modest,” replied Duncan. “Marty
pointed out that we needed to be up here seeing the news, as she
called it, so we can be ready to run if things go bad.” He
pointed down into the town. “If we wait for zombies to arrive
in the town square, it would be too late to escape.”