Even Zombie Killers Get The Blues (Zombie Killer Blues) (14 page)

“I guess so, Sergeant. Do I have to apologize to the
whole team?”

“If you want to live through our next encounter with
Zs, it’s probably a good idea.”

He did apologize. Everyone took it well, except for
Brit, who called him a dumbass and some other pretty abusive things until I
told her to lay off. Like I said, we worked for the Army, but we weren’t part
of it.

We set out again later that afternoon but without
all our gear. This time was killing time. The boats pulled up off the landing,
about one hundred meters. A large crowd of Zs was milling around the parking lot,
stepping on the remains of the ones the firecracker rounds had shredded last
night. The guys started popping shots at them, but hitting a target the size of
a head from a hundred meters away, on an anchored boat slowly rising and
falling is almost impossible. Only Ahmed was scoring hits on a regular basis. I
let Redshirt and Mya the LT continue to fire,
though,
because they needed to get accustomed to shooting at real dead targets instead
of pop ups.

Beside me, Jonesy lined up his 203 launcher.

“Did you get any flashbangs?”

“Nope, but I did manage to work a thumper into a
shell. Only about one in three survive the shot, so I brought twelve.”

“OK, I think we’ll only need two.”

“On the way!” He set the timers and fired six quick
rounds into the parking lot. We waited a few minutes and I listened for the
music to start up.

“Beastie Boys? REALLY?” The strains of “No Sleep
Till Brooklyn” started filling the air. It sounded like three of them were
working, each a second or two off the other.

“Hey, them white boys are the shit, Nick.”

We watched as more Zs started to shamble down the road
to the parking lot. We waited half an hour, then an hour. It was a packed,
milling mass, and we pulled back a few hundred meters and off the Gun – Target line,
in case of a misfiring fuse. Nine hundred steel pellets would shred one of
these boats, and us, in short order.

“Cockers, this is Lost Boys, FIRE AA4037, over.”

“Lost Boys, Fire, AA4037, out.”

Two minutes later the rounds started detonating over
the parking lot. Sharp cracks, blinding even in the sunlight, left small puffs
of smoke. We could see where the water on the edge of the river got ripped up
by the BBs and a few even skipped across the water towards us.

“Lost Boys, this is Cocker, rounds
complete, over.”

“This is Lost Boys, Rounds Complete, estimate two
hundred plus rendered ineffective. Thanks, Lost Boys out.”

We pulled back in towards the parking lot. Blood and
ooze ran down into the river, and here and there individual Zs stumbled about.
Jonesy shot another four thumpers with their timers set to half an hour, an
hour and six hours. Hopefully they would draw any more Zs down to the river.

The boats engines kicked out and we sped downriver,
around to the south side of point, and tied off to the remains of the dock
there.

This wasn’t going to be a sneak and peak anymore.
The Zs were too stirred up for that, and no way were we going to go blundering
around at night. This was going to be a balls-to-the-wall, run across campus,
killing everything in our path, plant the flag and GTFO. With pics to prove it
happened.

Chapter 36
We ran. Fast. Run. Stop. Aim. Fire. Run. We ran uphill from the dock, shooting
everything that moved. One team up one side of the street, another up the other
side.

There weren’t that many Zs but what there was made
me sick. Many of them were in the tattered remnants of uniforms, both the
cadets and regular soldiers, and it hurt to shoot at them. It was one thing to
watch from five hundred meters away while the artillery pounded them, another
to stop, aim, and place a .22 slug in the center of their faces from twenty
feet.  

We had made it almost halfway to our objective,
Trophy Point, overlooking the Hudson Valley, and were just coming out of the
tunnel leading to the parade field when we ran smack into group of Zs. They
were headed in the same direction as us, coming from around a corner, and in an
instant, we became a maelstrom of yelling, cursing, clubbing and firing, trying
to break through without getting bitten. I hit one as hard as I could with my
reinforced rifle stock, straight across the face and hopefully smashing its
nose into what was left of its brain. I fired into another on the downswing, a
quick burst that caught it in the throat, shoulder and leg. Beside me Jonesy
was using his barrel like a club, probably ruining it forever, smacking it down
on the heads of any Z that came near him.

We made it, almost. The Zs were slow to react, but
by the time PFC Redshirt, bringing up the rear, tried to make it through, they
were worked up to fury and he was buried under a pile of them, swinging his
hammer as hard as he could. He went down with a fight and a yell. Mya started
back, but Brit grabbed her and shoved her forward. She screamed at the crying
medic, “He’s
done!
Let’s go!” and then took off running herself. The
rest of us had turned and were laying down a suppressive fire so they could
catch up. We smoked the few still standing Zs as they came at us but couldn’t
see where Redshirt had fallen through the tall weeds. A quiet fell over the
grounds as we made our way over through the brush which grew up over the parade
field.

The LT and Mya looked visibly shaken, and Mya was
crying steady tears. Brit stood next to me, and whispered in my ear.

“You knew that was going to happen. The frigging
kid’s name was Redshirt, for Pete’s sake. I’m surprised he lasted this long.”

“Shut it Brit. I don’t care if he was predestined to
get sacrificed to the great Zombie God. He was my troop.”

“Whatever. Just trying to make you feel better.” She
walked away to scan part of the perimeter. It made me feel like an ass that I
understood what she meant. People die in our business.

“OK, that sucked, and it’s going to suck worse
trying to get back to the boat. Let’s get on with this mission, and stay on
your toes. Jonesy, you had point, you SHOULD have seen them coming. Be more
alert.”

“Warn’t nothing I could do, Nick. They just popped
outta the doorway next to me. But yeah, sorry about that Injun kid. Hope you’re
at your happy hunting grounds now.”

He led onward, across the field. Everyone’s eyes
were peeled now and the LT hadn’t said a word since leaving the boats.

We got to Trophy Point without further incident. The
cannons, captured from America’s enemies in our 19
^th
century wars,
were still there, lined up facing north against enemies that didn’t exist
anymore. We stood in a row, unfurled a flag, and Specialist Mya took our
picture. Propaganda for the civilians in the Secured Zones and the FEMA camps
around the country. I hope it helped them get through the day.

Down below, we could see the shattered mush that was
the Zs we had hammered with artillery. As we watched, another two rounds burst
over the parking lot. The redlegs were pumping them in every half hour until we
called stop. We watched until the smell was carried to us on a change of the
wind, then set out, back across the field, but a different way than we had
come.

The buildings themselves were shattered. It looked
like some serious fighting had taken place, and many of them were burned out. I
wondered how long they had held out, how long the ammo had lasted against the
hordes from New York City. South of here was one of the most densely populated
places in the country. Never mind the Zombies; the refugees would have stormed
this place. It happened to every military installation near a major population
center. The military represented hope, and places like Fort Bragg, close to
major southern population centers, had been quickly overrun, their troops
reluctant to fire on civilians until it was too late. West Point had been
burned and picked clean. It didn’t leave me much hope for Camp Smith.  It might
have made great propaganda to have a picture of troops back at West Point, but
from a military point of view, the place was useless.

We moved slowly past the fire-scorched stones of the
cadet barracks. Up ahead, echoing between the buildings, we heard footsteps
running quickly in our direction. Doc, now on point since we had another medic,
held up a hand signal for “halt” and we all quickly dropped behind cover.

A blood-soaked figure came around a corner about a
hundred meters away and continued down the road away from us in the direction
of the boats. Ahmed raised his rifle to shoot. I put my hand on his arm,
motioned for him to wait. Something didn’t look right. It moved wrong for a Z.
Too fast. It was wearing the remnants of an army issue uniform. Could there be
survivors here?

I stood up and yelled, “HEY! HEY YOU!” I know, too
much noise, but the figure stopped and turned at the sound of my voice, started
stumbling towards us.

He wore the remains of ACUs, ripped and shredded,
and he was bleeding from a dozen wounds when he collapsed in the road in front
of us. Doc walked forward, covering him with his rifle, then quickly slung it
and reached for his aid bag, yelling for Mya to come forward. She came at a
run, then stopped dead and vomited right there in the middle of the road. I had
begun to think that maybe she was in the wrong profession if she vomited every
time she saw blood. Brit said “Shit!” then jumped up and ran over herself. She
too stopped dead and started drawing her pistol from her leg holster.

Doc reached up and slapped it out of her hand. By
then I had made it up there, and I looked down at a bloody, but alive PFC
Redshirt.

He had a half a dozen bite marks on his hands and
other exposed areas, but it looked as if his armor had saved him from having
his neck torn out. Doc was already cutting away parts of his uniform to check
his wounds, and he yelled at Mya to give him a hand. After a few minutes, seeing
the kid was in no immediate danger of dying, I pulled Doc aside and asked him
why we weren’t shooting him dead on the spot, or sticking him with the Gom
Jabbar and icing him. 

“He’s immune. I’ve heard of it, but only two
confirmed cases. Ever. One in England, and another in Southeast Asia before
communications fell apart.”

“Really? No shit.”                                                

“Really, yes shit. He’s still in a bad way, and
those wounds can get infected. We have to get him back to the boats.”

Jonesy reached down with a hand, and slung the
unconscious figure over his shoulders. We started off in a trot down towards
the pier.

Before we got there, the radio Ahmed was carrying
cackled into life.

“Lost Boys, Lost Boys, this is Castle 3,
over”

The Firebase Ops officer was calling. I motioned for
LT Carter to take the radio.

“Castle 3, this is Lost Boys, um, Lost Boys 5,
over.” I knew he’d been about to say “Lost Boys 6” which was the call sign of the
commander of a unit. I laughed a bit.

“Lost Boys, be advised, engine fire and
explosion on number two boat, crew evacuated with injuries to boat one, boat
damaged and rowing back to base, over.”

“Uh, roger, over.” I grabbed the mike from the LT.

“Castle, how the hell are we supposed to get out of
here, break.” “Be advised we have one litter WIA, over”

“Understand, one litter WIA. Trying to
arrange air Evac  from Albany now, over.”

Great. You can’t make shit like this up. Everything
that can go wrong, will go wrong, especially since spare parts and new
equipment were almost impossible to come by.

“Lost Boys, be advised, Air Evac will be
available in five hours. Find a good LZ and hunker down, over.”

“Castle, if that bird doesn’t show up, I am going to
come back as a Z and eat you, over.”

“Understood, Nick. We will be there ASAP.
Navy Close Air Support is on station.”

Around me, night was falling. I gathered the team
around. We were going to have to make a stand.

I told them in one word. “Alamo.”  

Brit said it for all of us. “F my life.”

Alamo

Chapter 37

As the darkness settled down on us, we made our way
down to the dock. I wanted a long, open field of fire, a narrow approach, and, as
a
last chance, we could hit the water and
swim for it. Not something I wanted to do, because the current here was swift
and we would quickly get separated as we swept downstream.

Night fell, the stars came out, and a full moon
quickly rose over the east side of the valley. Brilliant silver light flooded
the landscape and reflected off the river. I got on the radio with the firebase
and asked for on-call illumination rounds. Since they dropped from a base-ejecting
shell eight hundred meters up in the air, they were fine. Actual fire support,
firecracker or white phosphorus rounds to burn the Zs out was out of the
question. The ridge of West Point blocked any low angle fire, and high angle
fire, in this wind, wouldn’t be accurate enough. We didn’t need a high angle
round getting blown a hundred meters off course and showering us with pellets.

The dock itself was made out aluminum, and the LT’s
idea of ripping up the dock to make our own little island wouldn’t work. Even
Jonesy, with his strength, couldn’t pry them apart. We discussed grenades, but
I decided the risk of accidental injury at close range was too great and would
call every remaining Z in ten miles. Besides, I hated grenades with a passion.
Didn’t trust the damn things, never did.

“How’s everyone doing on ammo?”

“Down to about half,” said Brit.