Zombie Killers: HEAT (11 page)

Chapter 260

One of the things that always bothered me about various shows about the Apocalypse on TV, or in books, was that, years after everything fell apart, the hero would just rig up some kind of siphon and suck gas out of the tanks in the ground. Then he would pour it into the nearest car and, zoom, off he goes into the distance!

Problem is, it doesn’t work like that. Gasoline after a few months degrades into a tacky, sticky volatile substance, which will screw up your car engine in nothing flat, if you can even get it to pour. That, and after a year or so, every battery made ever for a car will pretty much be dead, especially in northern climates. Tires will slowly flatten, rubber hoses and gaskets dry out, and so on. Hailstorms shatter windows. Trees fall on vehicles. Wildfires sweep through overgrown yards and destroy cars in garages. That’s why we scouts walked everywhere we went. We could count on our feet to get to where we needed to go. 

The team slowly made its way through the remains of the town to what had to be an exclusive, private marina. We didn’t encounter any undead, making our way silently through the darkness. They had been drawn to the sounds of the firing like moths to a flame. The only ones we did see were pressed up against the glass, reaching hungrily for us, covered in mold after being locked in their houses for eight years. We ignored them and kept walking, sweating fiercely in the humid Florida night.

The marina was, as expected, empty of anything big enough to brave the open ocean. When things broke down, millions of people had taken to sea in boats, most to starve to death or succumb to exposure and storm. That wasn’t what we were looking for; as I said, gasoline or diesel would be impossible to find after all this time.

Ryan stopped at the dock entrances, and whispered “damnnnn!” In front of us, aluminum mast sticking out of the water and deck awash, was the wreck of a really large sailboat. “Shit, we could have used that,” he said. I smacked his shoulder to bring him back to reality.

Breaking into teams, we searched the marina for small rowboats and rope. We quickly found half a dozen that had served as tenders or small fishing boats. Three actually had full sets of oars, and under Ryan’s direction, we tied them together in a long line. Then I got into the lead boat with Ryan and Obi, and the rest of the team got into the next one. 

The pull across the small bay took about fifteen minutes; the tides was coming in, helping us along towards the carrier. It loomed up out of the darkness like a giant monument to the folly of man. The waves lapping against its hull made a dull slapping sound, but it stood solidly, deeply grounded in the sand. It must have been a hell of a storm that pushed it up that far on the beach.

“If they don’t get this sucker out of her in less than a year, it’s going to be useless anyway,” said Ryan.

“Are you going to cry like a little bi-otch now?” asked Brit from the other boat, breathing heavily after her turn at the oars.

“Quiet!” I ordered. This was the hard part. We had to make our approach without getting shot to pieces. I was nervous as hell. Standing up in the boat, I waited until the gunfire died down again, and then yelled “STRASSER!” at the top of my lungs, cupping my hands around my mouth. We were about two hundred meters from them; far enough to give us a chance to get away if things went bad.

The firing dropped off, and a deep voice answered back. It was hard to hear them over the zombie howl. Through my night vision, I could see that they had created a wall of bodies on the causeway, almost twenty feet high. Pretty soon they would be shit out of luck; the minigun wouldn’t be able to traverse upward high enough. From the way their bursts had shortened, I figured they had to be getting low on ammo for the gun, too.

“STRASSER! IT’S AGOSTINE! I’M COMING IN!” We threw off the line connecting us to the string of boats. Ryan and Obi started pulling at the oars, and I sat in the front, holding’ Obi’s 240 balanced on the prow. If they opened up on us, I wanted to hit back as hard and as fast as possible. We could be walking, no, sailing into an ambush. The pucker factor got tighter and tighter as we got closer to the pier, and I jumped when several rifles cracked at once, almost pulling the trigger on the 240, but the rising moon had silhouetted two undead climbing over the pile, and the MR troops had taken them out.

One figure stood at the edge of the pier, waiting for me. “Strasser?” I called, and he answered back, “Agostine? Is that you?”

“Yes, and we’re going to save your men’s ass. How many do you have left?”

“Ten whole, not counting me, with one wounded,” he said. Statistic of Z fighting. Wounded by an undead, and you were pretty much a goner. Still, I had expected more.  

I motioned for the guys to stop rowing, and we sat there in the swell. “I have two more rowboats. We can take you off, but unarmed, and you’ll be POW’s.”

I could hear the weariness in his voice as he answered. “Just get us the hell off this dock. We can work out the details later.”

“Fuck that. Give me your word as a soldier that you’ll surrender honorably.” I knew, from that stupid note he sent me, that a guy like him would stick to his word. So would I, but for different reasons.

“Is Ms. O’Neil with you? How can I trust her?”

“Not my problem. I’d say you have to hurry the fuck up and make a choice.” Down the pier the howl was getting louder, as the main horde that had passed us started making its way onto the causeway.

“OK, on my honor,” he said, with a note of resignation in his voice. I knew that he really HAD no choice. If he said no, his men would shove him in the water and someone else would take us up on my offer.

After that, it was tricky. We had to get them off without getting swamped by undead, so they retreated back to the boats in a steady firing line, even as the attack mounted. They left their one wounded man, who had taken an accidental shot it the lower back, propped up behind the minigun. He shook each man’s hand as they filed past; Strasser was last, and he stayed with him almost till it was too late. As each of the ten troops stepped into a rowboat, Brit covered them with her shotgun, making them throw their weapons into the water.

As we pulled against the current, straining to tow the two other boats filled with the battered soldiers of the Mountain Republic, the undead erupted over the top of the pile, falling into the water, screaming and howling, thousands of them. The minigun whirred into life in one long, sustained burst that probably used up the last of their ammo and melted the barrels. A white phosphorus grenade someone had set to a trip wire went off, and suddenly there was a thunderous explosion that rained pieces of bodies and equipment into the water.

“BURN YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!” someone in one of the other boats yelled in a drawn out Southern drawl, but it was tinged with exhaustion and grief. I knew how he felt. 

Chapter 261

Dawn found us walking steadily back along the highway, with the Mountain Republic soldiers a dispirited group following behind us. They had no alternative; their nearest base was eight hundred miles or more northward, through jungle, swamps, and ruins. Along the way they would meet undead in their millions, wild animals, human predators, heat and thirst.

The march was tough; we had to constantly be on guard for an ambush like the one that had killed Scott Orr, and the heat was ridiculous. Brit limped along, her toenails not completely healed. Several times she had fallen back to walk alongside Harlan and glare at him. The man ignored her, just walking stolidly forward. She gave up after a while and rejoined us.

“Just want to say I appreciate what you did for us back there, Colonel. Most would have left us to die,” said Strasser, walking next to me. He ate up the miles with that easy Special Forces stride, while my prosthetic was starting to kill me. The heat and sweat were irritating the hell out of my stump.

“I’m human, and unlike you, I’m not a cruel bastard. Your troops didn’t deserve it. If it had been just you and Harlan, I would have left you there.”

“About what happened to your wife. It was a necessity, and as soon as I realized she didn’t have any information, I stopped Harlan. Not an easy thing to do, once he gets going. But then,” he said in his cultured, upper crust southern accent, “he’s not a gentleman or an officer, like you and me. A useful tool, like all enlisted.”

“I think,” I said, “you better shut the fuck up before I shoot you like the dog you are, god damned traitor.” A look of astonishment came across his face, and he slowed his walk to rejoin his men. We didn’t speak for the rest of the march back to the boats.

Another mile passed, and I listened to the guys talking to try and get myself in a better mood. Soldiers will bullshit at any time and nay place, if they can. We walked down the center of the road, avoiding ditches that might hide undead, on alert for whomever ambushed us earlier. My pack was annoying me, and even though, like most soldiers, I didn’t wear any underwear, I was still starting to chafe from the sweat and heat. Let me tell you, once a hot spot starts, it’s almost impossible to make it go away.

“Hey, lepa devojka, why did Nick call you Mary Sue?  That it is not your name.” Ziv was walking directly behind Shona, and had been trying to talk to her all day. She hadn’t answered him once.

Obi laughed at Ziv’s failure, but answered him when she didn’t. “A Mary Sue is a woman in a book or a movie who can kick ass all over the place in a pretty unrealistic manner. Like she did yours, Ziv.” Ryan laughed at that one, and I grinned. Ziv shot us all a dirty look.

“When we get back to New York, I will settle down with you and have good strong fighting children.” 

She turned and walked backwards, giving him the finger. “I’d rather screw a pig, and I’m Jewish.” Then she turned around again and kept walking. Even the Mountain Republic prisoners laughed at that. After all, soldiers are soldiers. Ziv, unabashed, kept up a string of endearments.

“Not going to work, Sasha,” said Brit.

“I cannot help it, demon wench. My soul burns for her.”

“Oh my god, I’m going to puke,” said Brit, and she made vomiting sounds.

This continued pretty much all the way back to the beach. The dead were dead, and life went on. If Shona asked, I would tell him to knock it off, but she said to let it go, that he would get tired of it soon enough.

Somehow I doubted it.

Chapter 262

“He’s not coming with us.” Brit sat with her shotgun pointed directly at Harlan, who still ignored her.

“Brit, he’s a prisoner, and if we’re the good guys, we have to treat him decently.” I was at the point of giving up the argument; it had been going on for several hours now.

“Maybe you’re a good guy, but I’m not. Not always. Ever been waterboarded, Nick?”

No, I hadn’t, and she knew it.

“It’s like you’re dying. I thought I was never going to see you or the kids again. Over and over. This bastard laughed the whole time he did it.”

Harlan just sat there, hands ziptied behind his back. He was a bull of a man, short but extremely stocky. His face had the broken nose of a fighter, and several hair thin knife scars also. Starsser I didn’t like because he was an arrogant prick, but he believed his mission. I could respect that. This guy was like Ziv, except that Ziv had a code of loyalty and was, for all his brutality, a decent man.

“Well, Sergeant Harlan. What should we do with you?” I asked the man himself.

“Do what you want. Doesn’t really matter to me. I expect I’ll be dead soon enough. We’ll all be, one way or another.”

“Got anything to say about torturing my wife?”

He spit on the ground in front of him. “Yeah, I pretty much think she got off on it.”

Brit shouldered her 12 gauge and fired, just as I shoved the barrel upwards. The muzzle blast ruffled his hair as the pellets passed over him. “Goddamnit, Brit, that’s what he WANTS! Quick and easy!”

Her chest heaved with heavy breathing, and her usually pale face was flushed with passion. Racking the slide and keeping it pointed at his chest, she pushed me aside and walked up to him.

“Not going to be that easy, bastard. Here, hold this, Obi,” she said, and handed him the shotgun. Then she took out four pairs of zipties off her belt. She brutally tied them around his hands and legs, pulling them tight, even though he was already bound.

“There, you bastard, this is a pretty deserted stretch of beach, but I’m sure one of the undead will come along eventually. Before you die.” She shrugged off her camelback and laid it on the ground, the water inside sloshing around.

“You’re going to go crazy from thirst, but you’ll be afraid of drinking, because you want your life over with before the undead get to you. Eventually, though, the thirst is going to get to you. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a fresh undead, and they’ll kill you before you turn. If you’re not, if one of the slow ones comes along, they’ll bite, and before they do enough damage to kill you, you’ll turn. You’ll be tied and bound, and undead. Forever.”

At that, he showed his first sign of fear. “Major Strasser, I was just acting on your orders! You were there! Tell them!”

The Mountain Republic officer just looked at him and said, “All soldiers have an obligation to disobey immoral orders. You were a useful tool, because you’d do whatever I told you to do.”

Before he finished speaking though, I made up mind. He was an even bigger monster than his NCO. An officer has an obligation to his own men, to not put them in that situation in the first place.

“Obi, get me about thirty feet of rope,” I ordered, and the kid hopped to it. He returned in less than a minute, and I waited while Ziv fashioned a noose.

Strasser was beside himself. “Agostine, you can’t do this! I’m an officer and a prisoner! The laws of war require a trial and even exchange!” His tirade choked off when Ziv tightened the noose. Hanging a man without anything to push him off of something is hard, but we did it; Ziv, Ryan and I all grunting with the strain of hauling several hundred pounds of soon to be dead weight. His protests were choked off, and he danced crazily in the sunlight.

I sent the rest of the team back to the boats and stood over Harlan. I knew what Brit wanted, but I was torn. Condemning someone to undeath was something I had only done once before, and she deserved it. Maybe Ziv was right. Maybe I was getting soft. I pulled out my pistol and stretched out my arm. Behind him, Strasser’ s body had finally stopped twitching, and his tongue protruded from a blackened face. Around his neck, the piece of wood with the word TRAITOR carved in it moved gently in the wind.

“DO IT!” urged Harlan. “Don’t leave me lying here to scream like your redheaded bitch did!”

“My what?”

“That bitch. Your wife. She screamed and screamed, but I think she DID enjoy it. Not putting it to her enough, are you, you one legged gimp? Did they shoot your balls off too?”

Apparently, some people CAN talk themselves right out of the grave. “I was going to shoot you, but now you can rot.” I holstered my pistol and walked away, with his curses following me.

Ryan had made contact with the
Georgia
by radio at our set time, and the sub was waiting offshore, as close in to the surf as they could get. The boats would be dangerously overloaded, with sixteen of us crammed in, but fortunately the waves weren’t very high. We left the cache of weapons and ammunition buried on the beach, a few meters above the high tide mark. The carrier wasn’t going anywhere, and I figured the Mountain Republic, with its limited resources, wouldn’t mount a new expedition any time soon. Someone would be coming back, eventually, though, so better to have them around.

The boats hopped over the waves, rising up and down with the swell, until we were almost two kilometers out to sea. Landward, the sun was sinking towards the horizon, turning the sky blood red. Ryan drove our boat, and we all eyed the prisoners warily. 

The submarine rose out of the water like some biblical Leviathan, sail breaking the water after they saw us coming. One moment, the sea was empty, and then, a hundred meters further on, a vast grey bulk shouldered its way upward in s amass of foam and waves. We drove the boats right up the hull, and hustled the prisoners out onto the deck as several sailors took control of the zodiacs.

I stood and watched the prisoner transfer; and more so watching the sun go down. Brit stood next to me as Shona, Obi, Ziv and Ryan unloaded our equipment from the boats. Elam watched the prisoners with his pistol drawn.

“We got off easy from that one, Nick,” said Brit.

“Tell that to Scott,” I answered. 

She said nothing. The waves had started picking up, along with the wind, making stowing the boats in the hangar difficult for the sailors. I turned to head for the hatch on the deck, when something caught my eye in the darkness of the land. A twinkle, something. Was there some survivors out there signaling us?

Then, climbing high into the sky, something caught the last rays of the setting sun. What the hell…

“RPG!” yelled Ziv at the top of his lungs, and with a start, I knew what he meant. It wasn’t a rocket propelled grenade, something heavier, but that yell was the quickest way to get a trained soldier to hit the deck.  I threw Brit down and covered her with my body. Everyone else except for Shona and Ziv, the only other trained soldiers who had dealt with this stuff before, stood stupefied, ignorant to what the call meant. Ziv had started moving even before he yelled, diving for the hatch, and Shona grabbed Elam by his tactical gear and dragged him down.

The Javelin Anti-Tank missile, for that was what it must have been, rocketed down from us in top attack mode, and crashed into the sail, detonating in a thunderous CRACK – BANG! that was too loud to hear. I was thrown clear of the deck and towards the water, sliding down the hull, trying desperately to hold onto Brit in the coming darkness. Her hand was torn from mine as the the hull shuddered and started to move under maximum power, turning east as it did so. I hit the water with a splash, and was instantly drawn down the side by my body armor and equipment. Desperate to get away from the propellers, I kicked off and swam with all my might down and away, struggling out of the gear.

When finally my head broke the surface, what seemed an eternity later, the sub was drawing away from me, a roaring jet of flame and smoke pouring out of the conning tower. Each rise of a wave showed it further and further away.

“BRIT!” I yelled as loud as I could, but my voice was carried away by the rising wind. Floating as best I could on my back, I unlaced my boots and let them fall away, then took off my pants, remembering my water survival training. I tied off the legs and scooped air into them, fashioning a crude life preserver to put around my neck. Then I set off in a strength saving back stroke towards the shore, trying to stay in the shelter of the waves to avoid the land breeze. Every time I crested a wave, I looked into the darkness and yelled for Brit. I thought I heard a faint cry off to my left, but only once.