Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (31 page)

The dance continued for several hours. As morning turned to
afternoon, the Napoleon's maxim about who is really the King of the
Battlefield became a factor. It wasn't the biggest guns, or the
bravest soldiers. An army marches on its stomach—it depends on
supply. The quartermaster would determine the outcome of this battle,
too.

He had a lot of time to think about it. Each time the truck came
up the ramp of the levee to deliver ammo to his vehicles, it was one
resupply closer to the end. The bullets would run out before the
zombies…

They kept coming. There were so many, in fact, they had
practically come to a stop. Like your typical evening commute on the
interstate—there were too many bodies packed into the fields.

The zombies nearest the tanks and guns were pushed back by the
force of the cold steel heading their way. It seemed to confuse them
and spin them in the wrong direction. That swirl of indecision was
the only thing keeping the defenders alive. And that worked into the
evening until his radio crackled.

“We're out of 7.62."

He watched the writhing mass of death out in the fields. The men
and women of his command had achieved the impossible. They'd held the
zombies for almost a full day by whittling away at the leading edge
of their battle force. The resulting stack of dead and injured
zombies was ten feet high and a mile long. Each time a zombie fell,
more took its place—mashing it into the ground to become part
of the foundation of the dynamic monument they were all constructing.

Without the 7.62 ammo to fuel their most effective weapons, he had
to think of alternatives.

The Humvees were all parked in the middle, belt-feeding their ammo
onto the far end of the bridge. It was the most vulnerable point of
their defense, and worth every round they'd expended there.
Belatedly, he wished he'd thought of a way to blow the bridge. If the
zombies got in, they'd never need the road again anyway. But blowing
a bridge—even with tanks—was not an easy proposition.

Over the course of the day more and more people showed up with the
spears Chloe had provided. She was earning her keep. By the time the
sun was nearing the horizon, there were hundreds of people on the
levee nervously holding their makeshift spears. About an equal number
of people stood below the levee—nearest the town. They appeared
to be the young, infirm, or groups of women managing gaggles of
children. He wanted to order them away from the tip of the spear but
guessed they wouldn't dare leave their loved ones on the fighting
line, no matter if it made sense or not.

He caught sight of his runner, Tyler, and called him over. “You've
done excellent work out there, son. But I have a new challenge for
you.” He pointed down into the town. “See those cars down
there? We need them up here. Pointing toward the zombies. Once it
turns dark, we need to maintain the light. Get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, son. Good luck.”

He wondered if they could survive until nightfall, but they'd have
to be prepared in case they did.

2

Before the darkness fell, he OK'd the use of the remaining
canister rounds from each Abrams. The shotgun blasts were by far the
deadliest and most effective single rounds in his arsenal, but he had
precious few of them. Even the munitions truck only carried a few
extras per tank. The rest of the spare rounds, as he feared, were for
use against enemy armor. He still wasn't ready to waste those.

The canisters served one important purpose, though he didn't
realize it at first. Because the Bradley was in its way, Alpha-2 had
to fire into the crowd at angles, instead of directly forward. This
created angular ridges of broken bodies, which served as funnels to
keep the dead moving along those piles, instead of straight toward
the ditch.

“Alpha-1. Use canister at a 45-degree angle—about 2
o'clock—into the crowd. Alpha-2, continue to fire at your ten
o' clock. Wait for zombies to fill in the gaps, then fire again.
Out.”

He didn't wait for the confirmation. They each turned their
turrets in the required direction, and the murdering continued.

No, they're already dead. Never forget that.

The rounds went out and knocked down bodies like bowling pins. The
tungsten balls of the shotgun-like shells traveled several hundred
yards into the crowd until their energy was completely absorbed by
the thick number of bodies. As instructed, the tanks would wait for
the zombies to walk over their fallen brothers and sisters before
unloading another one on them.

It was grisly. He almost couldn't watch as heads detached and
bodies evaporated. But the consolation was that it created a wedge of
a sort, painted into the crowd using dead bodies as the medium. If
the zombies were a waterfall, tumbling down toward the ditch, the
tanks had created an inverted V shape, which would deflect the
follow-on zombies away from the central bridge.

He was mesmerized by the destruction when he snapped to attention.

“John, John, John. Tsk, tsk. Who gave you permission to use
my toys?”

Elsa's smooth, feminine voice cut through the harsh gargle of
boring sitreps and ammunition requests. And, he admitted, it scared
him.

“John? I know you're there. I can see you sitting in your
little truck.”

He looked up, knowing a drone had to be flying. He spied the
toothpick-thin drone with its long, narrow wings high above. He
waved.

“That's right. I'm up here. Always watching. And, John, I
don't like what I'm seeing.”

He keyed his mic, knowing there was no point in ignoring her.

“What can I do for you, Elsa? I'm sort of busy here.”
He figured the noise of gunfire would bleed through as his supporting
evidence.

“I guess I should have known you'd survive. I should have
shot you myself, then thrown you in that cesspool. No matter. That
can be fixed. But I can't have you messing up my plans with your
traitorous rebels.”

“We aren't rebels, ma'am; we're United States Army.”

“You were Army. Just like those men and women playing
soldier up in St. Louis were citizens of this great country. Now
you're all rebels.”

That navy man said St. Louis was crawling with Polar Bears—a
euphemism for citizens who rose up against the government as part of
the Patriot Snowball movement. Though he had no love for the movement
or what they stood for, he didn't feel particularly offended to now
be lumped in with them. If the government was run by Elsa and her
minions, he figured "rebel" described him fairly well now.

When he didn't rise to her bait, she kept at it. “You know
what that means, don't you? What does the United States of America do
to traitors?”

“Promotes them, apparently.”

She laughed heartily. “Oh, John. I love your spirit. That
must be the zombie perfume getting to you. No, give me a second and
I'll tell you...”

He watched as the Abrams' continued to hammer at the zombies.
They'd done an admirable job of laying down the hate in precisely the
places he envisioned when he thought up the idea of channeling the
dead. It would put more zombies on each end of the ditch, but less in
the exact center—and the bridge.

In a minute Elsa came back on his channel. “Military time.
Hard to judge these things. You know?”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“OK, let's try this again.” She coughed openly as if
to prepare for a speech. “What does the United—”

He caught the glint of metal as it fell from the sky, but it was
only a fraction of a second, and on the edge of his vision. When he
turned, an explosion ripped into the wayward Bradley nearest the
ditch. The explosion was so powerful, it blew down several of the
civilians on that end of the levee. He felt the lurch of the earth a
moment after impact.

“Dammit!” Elsa complained. “I wanted that to be
timed better. Maybe the next one,” she said with a laugh.

He was on his microphone in an instant, seeing this for what it
was. He spoke in a calm voice.

“This is Warfighter actual. Alpha-1 and -2, disengage. I
repeat, disengage. We are under attack from—”

Would they believe him if he said Air Force? Under attack from
members of the same team? Could he explain the nuance of who was
firing at them?

“—unknown elements.” It was a lame declaration.

“Move into the town. How copy?”

“Oh John. I hope you notice I didn't drop it on
you
.
Did you? I hope so. It means you aren't a threat to me. Your military
hardware is the real danger to me. Just thought you ought to know
that.”

There was no time for personal vendettas. He looked at his
deployment. The other Bradley was far down the levee, working things
on that end. If he pulled everyone back, the end would come that much
sooner. If he left them to die from the air, it would also end.

He had to preserve his forces. No matter the cost. If he couldn't
kill zombies from the ideal spot on the levee, he would kill them
from inside the town. From another town. From wherever he found
himself.

Life was long and left many opportunities for the use of precious
military equipment. These were his men. His tools. He was going to
save them.

“Warfighter actual. All units, abandon the levee. Find cover
in the town. Out.”

“Dear John,” she laughed, “it's not me, it's
you. Run, run, run. I'm gonna find you.”

Don't you have better things to do?

He wondered about that as he abandoned his own Humvee and ran to
the civilians standing out on the levee, looking confused and
distracted by what just happened. It only took him a minute to listen
to rumors that the zombies had a magical weapon now. One that could
obliterate a perfectly good armored fighting vehicle like it was
nothing.

The crowd was a flight risk. It was up to him to calm it. He
needed the civilians more than ever before. They all needed each
other if they were to survive until tomorrow.

Somewhere above, he imagined, another 2,000-pound JDAM was waiting
to pounce.

That thought stuck with him as night draped itself over the chaos.

Victoria was jarred awake as a door slammed shut. In her groggy
state, she observed how the helicopter tipped forward, and they began
another ascent.

“Did we land?” she called out. Then, noticing Hayes
was gone, she leaned so she could see outside.

A gigantic complex of steel and concrete structures filled the
entire window view. White dust coated everything, like someone had
shaken dirty powdered confectionery sugar from above.

“What is this place?”

“Biggest concrete plant in the world,” Jane called out
from the pilot’s seat.

“You’re kidding,” she said in disbelief, though
she couldn’t fathom how she could possibly know whether Jane
was lying. Or that it mattered.

“But why did he get out. Why didn’t we?”

The craft banked to the left, and she saw down to the surface of
the Mississippi River. They’d evidently not gone far off their
course. When they stabilized again, several hundred feet up, Jane
answered her.

“He said to tell you thanks, but that he can’t go to
Cairo. Things are dangerous there, now.”

“Oh, but it’s OK for you and me?” The
implication was that Jane was the man’s wife. Surely…

“He put me in charge of getting you to Cairo, then
retrieving the old woman.”

“She has a name. It’s Marty,” she voiced into
the mic for the internal comms.

“Yes. Marty. We’re going to rescue her.”

She didn’t know how to respond. Was a thank you in order, or
was this all part of Hayes’ convoluted forward-thinking that he
calls planning? What could possibly be more important at a concrete
plant than in the city where the object of his testing had to be
found?

Victoria sat back in her seat, finally giving up on watching where
they were going. “You know, I don’t get you. What do you
see in that guy?” she echoed his question from the security
room. She didn’t expect a reply from her kinda-sort enemy, but
she’d spent enough time with the man to feel a kinship of a
sort with her. If she found him insufferable in just a few hours
together, what must his wife think?

Jane laughed. “He’s not so bad, once you understand
what motivates him.” She looked back at Victoria but didn’t
elaborate.

“And, frankly, I didn’t have much choice.”

“He said something about arranged marriages...”

“Yeah, he likes to use that as an excuse, but that wasn’t
really what brought us together. Or what keeps us together.”

“Because you know what motivates him?”

“Partly. He has changed since this crisis started, but for
the better, actually. In the old days, he was consumed by his damned
research. He was convinced he’d cure the world of Cancer. But
when his priority shifted to...other goals, well, he became even more
driven. I think once the plague was released, and he saw the effects,
he started to relax.”

Victoria was stunned by the inappropriateness of her glib attitude
but had nothing to say.

“Anyway, fixing the plague has become his driving force. But
for once it's something I can directly help him with, which makes us
a team again. It really feels good.”

Again, the impossibility of feeling good while the world burned
was bone-jarringly insensitive to all those who had suffered because
of the man. But, the whole thing forced her to look at her own
relationship in another manner.

Was her relationship with Liam helped or hindered by the Zombie
Apocalypse? Would she have a relationship, otherwise? Was it fair to
ask questions she already knew the answers to?

They had a lot of bad times during their nightmare weeks on the
run, but also some good ones. The first thing that popped in her head
was that first innocent kiss behind the tree when they’d
escaped St. Louis. She’d whispered in his ear that she was so
glad they’d met, and that she was thankful he had rescued her.
The sense of relief wasn’t just because they’d gotten out
of the city filled with zombies, but that he made her forget the
reason she’d left Colorado in the first place. It was one of
the greatest feelings she’d experienced since leaving home.