Zombie Killers: HEAT (8 page)

Brit broke the tension, like she often did, by making a joke. “Aww, he’s so CUTE when he gets all flustered!” she muttered, looking at Obi. “Like a big teletubby!” Everyone laughed, and he sat down, embarrassed, muttering “What the F is a teletubby?”

“Listen, everyone,” I said, after the laughter stopped. “All of us bring something to this table, and we either work as a team, or we die. Does everyone get that?”

There were grumbling assents from around the room, and even a sulky, mumbled “yeah” from Obi.  I knew he was going to be a pain in the ass until we actually got into the shit, and then he would be humbled, or not. Nothing like an undead howl or shrapnel from a frag wizzing past your head to turn you into a smooth functioning team.   

Chapter 251

What most people don’t realize about upstate New York in the summer time, is that it can get incredibly hot. Sweat rolled down my face from under my Kevlar, streaking the camo paint. Even more annoying, a mosquito was buzzing around my ear, with that annoying whine. It settled on the slight gap between my uniform sleeve and my glove, and I watched it extend its probe and probably inject me with yellow fever or West Nile virus or some other shit. I didn’t move, though. I held absolutely still, trying desperately to not move a muscle.

Beneath me on the street, walking slowly through the ruins of Mechanicville, a pair of scouts from the 2-108 Infantry BN moved cautiously. They advanced slowly, in bounding overwatch, one man moving while the other looked cautiously around for threats.

Around me, invisible from the road, were the rest of the team, shaped into a crooked L. At the base of the L, off to one side of the road but still with good line of site, Obi lay behind a rubble pile, underneath a piece of torn canvas. Beside him was Ziv, both to give him an experienced older hand, and to feed him ammo for the 240B machine gun. I had stuck them together because the kid needed someone to smack him down a bit.

Further behind them, high up in a ruined third floor office, Elam peered through a hole punched in the cinder block, while Brit operated as his spotter. She had a tablet with a fiber optic webcam watching over the entire scene. Normally she wouldn’t depend on a battery operated device, but the ambush was going to be a one-time thing. Hopefully.

The infantry had been given the mission of moving a heavy box, simulating a nuclear warhead, twenty kilometers from Albany to Stillwater, through the mostly cleared, but heavily damaged, urban strip that lined Rt. 32 for most of the way. They had been told to be on the lookout for undead and that our team was going to simulate an ambush somewhere along the route. I was a bit nervous about that; we only wanted them to get past us without them discovering the ambush. For that I had established with them that we would fire a red flare in recognition of being discovered.

It was a dangerous game, because both they and we had live ammunition. A single twitch on the wrong finger could be the start of a bad day, and the infantry had to be on the lookout for a real ambush from reavers or an actual undead attack. I wanted to know, though, that the team could set up and operate on the fly.

We had already done so, once. The first ambush set up had been just north of Albany, and they had walked right through without noticing anything. If we had wanted to, we could have done enough damage to make them non-mission capable. Once their rear guard had passed, I put the team to the real test. We fell back to our assembly sight, and RAN. Full out, battle gear, packs and weapons, sweating in the July heat, parallel to where we knew the infantry were advancing cautiously up the road. Down side streets, through abandoned houses with weapons drawn. Twice we silently dispatched undead that had attacked us as we went into buildings, and once Elam had twisted his ankle going over a fence, but he went gamely on, supported by Ziv until he could put weight on it again. We moved with little noise, though I noted that Obi was having a hard time keeping up. The kid was learning a lesson about being a scout. It wasn’t all about shooting well. More often, it was about being able to move quietly and unseen. Better a fight avoided than a fight lost.

The next ambush site was in Mechanicville, a few kilometers short of their actual objective. I figured that by now, the scouts would be getting a little bit numb to their search, and we could stand a better chance of them walking by again. The first site had been easy; they were just setting out and we had plenty of time to prepare. This one was much tougher, a hasty ambush in an unknown spot.

I watched the scout as he peered down the street from a doorway, then motioned silently for his partner to advance. Both of them passed down the street, walking five feet from where Shona, Scott and Ryan crouched behind a fallen wall, just to my right. They were holding as absolutely still as I was.

The two scouts passed by, then almost walked on top of Obi and Ziv’s position. In case of a real ambush, I was to open fire, and Ziv was tasked with taking out the scouts, then returning to feed the gun, which would be hammering the main body. We would engage for as long as I thought we were causing casualties, then break contact to hopefully hit them again. Of course, in Miami, there would be the undead to cause a problem, but I had thought about that too. I was pretty sure that Strasser was no dummy, and some kind of noise diversion would have been emplaced miles way to draw the undead away from the area. I was pretty sure their extraction from the carrier would be by truck or ship, but either way they had to get off the carrier somehow, and we could hit them then. If they went by boat, a friend was going to be nearby to shove an Mk – 48 torpedo up their asses. In fact, that was what I preferred.

Just as the last scout passed the emplaced machine gun team, the rest of the platoon started to move into the open space I had selected for the engagement. The looked tired, and the guys humping the two hundred pound simulated warhead were dragging ass. I was holding my breath; another minute and the lead man would be in line with machine gun.

Where upon, of course, the canvas hiding said machine gun erupted off the two figures, and Ziv and Obi rolled out onto the street, locked in hand to hand combat. “Oh for fucks sake,” I heard Shona call over the team net, and Brit’s laugh echoed across the road. The infantry stopped where they were, staring at the two figures, who were covered with street dust and rapidly exchanging blows and trying holds on each other.

“STAND DOWN!” I called out over the net, and stood up, finally slapping at the mosquito, long after it had infected me with whatever. “Come on,” I said to the rest of the team, and I jogged over to where they were fighting. The infantry had gathered around in a circle, with some of them cheering them on. I noticed, though, that they had put out flank security.

“Are you going to stop them?” asked Ryan, but before I could answer, Shona spoke.

“Hell no, let them fight it out. We do this all the time in the infantry. It gets bad blood out.”

“NO KNIVES!” I yelled as I saw Obi, reach for his K-bar. Despite having more than fifty pounds and almost thirty years on the Serbian, he was getting his ass handed to him. I needn’t have said anything. Ziv grabbed his wrist, twisted and did some kind of pinch, sending the knife flying, and then kicked Obi in the balls as hard as he could. The younger man fell to the ground doubled over, and Ziv spit on him. The surrounding soldiers burst into cheers and started chanting “ZIV! ZIV!” and then one idiot actually started with “TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES!” Soon they were all shouting it, and Ziv walked around with his arms up in the air, a rare smile on his face.

I sighed. “Scott, see what you can do for him. Brit, go get our hero calmed down and keep him away from Obi for the rest of the way back.”

“Ha, do it yourself. I’m not going near him right now, the conquering hero will probably want me to suck his …”

I interrupted her. “I get it. Ryan, take Ziv and …”

Shona laughed and said “Ryan’s a squid, he’ll probably want to suck HIS dick!”

The two women burst out laughing, as did Scott. Even Elam, normally very reserved, smiled. Ryan blushed and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘nasty women’ under his breath. 

I love it when a team comes together.

Chapter 252

Downstairs, there was quite a party going on. When I left, Ziv and Odi had been halfway through a bottle of Vodka, with Shona going shot for shot with them. Each was trying to outdo the others in stories about combat, though I suspected that Ziv was holding back, and Odi was making half his shit up. Scotty Orr was playing his guitar, trying to teach Elam how to play. Both ignored the raucous drinking and shit talking. Ryan Szimanski was out on the river, cat fishing with Red and our kids. You couldn’t eat the fish from the Hudson, but it was still fun.

We were leaving tomorrow, a UH-60 scheduled to take the team down to Providence Naval Base, where we would board the
U.S.S Georgia
for a fast sail down the East Coast to outside of Miami. The converted ballistic missile sub would stay hull down over the horizon and launch a UAV to recon the carrier, see if the MR people were there yet. Once we were within boat distance, we were going to go in under the cover of darkness and approach overland. Once there, it would be “make shit up on the fly”.

I had a few concerns about what we were getting into, but they could wait. The team had been practicing non-stop for a week; intel had put the MR guys more than three weeks from starting their op, and we had used the time to drill constantly. All of our guys, except for maybe Obi, were professional soldiers, even if several were civilians in reality. In any case, they all had months and years of combat experience, and were good at it. The ones that sucked, well, they were dead by now.

That left me some precious alone time with my wife. She lay on the bed, watching Game of Thrones for the umpteenth time on her laptop. I watched in the candle light and glow of the screen, thinking about when we first met. She still looked like the college girl who had saved my life, except now, at twenty seven, she was all woman. Soft curves and hard muscles, and steel right through her soul.

Like almost everyone, the Apocalypse had thrown Brit for a loop. Often, in those first years, she had broken down into an elemental fury, angry at the way the world had passed, and more than a little unstable. Ever since we had confronted the woman who had set the undead plague onto the world, though, Brit had become more and more grounded. When I had almost lost it a few years ago, with too much death and dying piling up on me, she had been there to stop me from eating my pistol. Now, well, she still drove me crazy, and I had to watch out for her fiery red head temper when I actually did screw up, but she was my partner in all things. It’s funny how it had taken the end of the world to make us find each other. I sat down on the edge of the bed and unstrapped my leg, rubbing some lotion into the stump with one hand and gently twisting her red ponytail with my other.

She shooed me away, annoyed that I was interrupting her show. ‘You know what pisses me off about the Zombie Apocalypse?” she muttered, not taking her eyes off the screen.

“What pisses you off, oh Mother of Dragons?” I started tracing my finger across the muscles of her back; she was wearing one of my old Army PT shirts and a pair of black panties, and nothing else. Her long pale legs stretched out on the bed, and I devoured the arch of her back. 

“The fact that I will never get to see how this ended,” she said, still ignoring me.

I leaned over and started blowing in her ear. She ignored me for a full minute, engrossed in a scene where some shirtless guy with eye makeup was gutting another dude in armor, so I leaned over and stuck my tongue in her ear.

“Stop, asshole!” she said, wiping at her ear. “I’m just getting to the good part!”

I bit gently down on her earlobe, and reached over and pulled the power cord out of the back of the laptop. It shut down with a blink and a whirring sound, and she rolled over and pushed me off the bed. I fell onto the floor, and she stood over me, green eye flashing.

“You done fucked up now, mister. That was my favorite scene!” She reached down and pulled her shirt up and over her head, standing over me looking like some angry Celtic goddess.

“Oh no, this is MY favorite scene!” I hauled myself up by the bedpost, took her in my arms, and pushed her onto the bed. I caught a faint smile in the candlelight, just briefly, and then she put a stern look on her face again.

The rest is none of your damned business.

Chapter 253

For some strange reason, I hated flying, but loved riding in Blackhawks. This one, though, was making me nervous, causing me to stare at the ground rushing past me, a hundred feet below and going past at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. It had been eight years of constant combat and little maintenance for most of the equipment the military used now days, and the one we rode in was streaked with grease and hydraulic fluid, soot from a fire, and something I suspected was dried blood stains.

I knew without looking what shape the rest of the team was in. It had shown this morning when we had assembled at the PZ for our ride. Ryan and Scott were fine; Brit and I were a little tired. Elam seemed ready to go, but he was a very calm and inscrutable guy, like his father had been.

Ziv sat across from me, looking like someone had woken him up from the grave. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a rough stubble on his face. I was surprised to see that it was shot through with streaks of grey. I had no idea how old Ziv was, but he had fought in Bosnia as a young man, so he had to be well into middle age. He kept this head shaved, though, so I never thought about him having grey hair. Other than guzzling about a gallon of water, and his bloodshot eyes, he showed little effect from what must have been a pretty epic night of drinking.

I had my suspicions about the other two members of the team. Obi had a huge black eye, and looked like he was sitting a bit uncomfortably on the canvas seat. He didn’t move very fast, and I had to yell at him to hurry the hell up as we boarded. Next to him, ignoring him completely, Shona stared out the open doorway. I had caught a glimpse of her right hand, the knuckles were split and covered in band aides. She also had a split and puffy lip. There was a story there, and I was dying to know, but neither said anything. Oh, to be young again! Brit made a point of staring at both of them in turn, and looking at their injuries, and then laughing, hard. Neither could look her in the eye. Elam spent his time taking shots at roaming undead, practicing.

Beneath me passed the endless ruins of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. A few towns had survived in the hills, but most had been overrun by the hordes of people coming from the Boston to NYC corridor. It had been, not so much the undead, though that helped, but rather the breakdown of the supply chain that fed our fragile economy. No more pre-cut chicken wrapped in plastic. No more cold milk. No more gasoline. After a while, no more ammunition; it had been mostly used up on each other, fighting to survive. The Navy Base in Portland, Maine, had seen F-18 fighter bombers dropping cluster bombs and napalm on the hordes of civilians pushing northward, chased by, and turning into, the undead. They had blown the bridges at the Merrimack and Piscataqua Rivers, and though that stopped the undead, the starving hordes had swum the rivers, seeking any safety they could. It had been a slaughter.

Now, as we approached the reclaimed base at Providence, the lawns of the deserted suburbs were turning into scrubby fields, and swimming pools had become breeding grounds for untold numbers of mosquitoes. Built up commercial centers of towns had often burned, with nothing to stop the fires from shorting out electrical systems, looters, or lighting strikes. Those looked like skeletons, and as we passed over, undead ran after the helo, howling at a high pitch that set my teeth on edge, even over the rotor wash. We passed over Providence harbor, and landed with a thump on the dock where the
U.S.S. Georgia
was tied off.

Waiting until the rotors spun down, we disembarked, dragging duffle bags of equipment and weapons after us, and were greeted by the Chief of the Boat, Command Master Chief Gilbert. He was a grizzly old NCO, and ran the
Georgia
like his own personal fiefdom, officers be damned. He and I went way back, to an epic brawl in a bar in Bermuda, right after I had formed the Team.

“Hey Nick,” he said, grasping my hand in a grip of steel, “how’s it going, brother?” He stopped and looked the team over. “Where’s Doc? And Jonesy? And I’d swear that was Ahmed, but he’s way too young.”

“Valhalla, Chief. Valhalla. This is the new guys, or new to you,” and I introduced them around.

“Sergeant Yasir, I knew your father. He was a good man, and saved my life once. I’ll tell you the story someday. Miss O’Neil, well, I’ve heard about you. You can have my quarters.”

“Are you going to move out of them, Chief?” she said, with the sweetest smile.

“Hadn’t planned on it,” he laughed, then detailed a couple of squids to give us a hand stowing our gear. Ryan stood there on the deck, actually drooling on the deck plates.

“Hey, Ski, are you OK?” I waved my hand in front of my face.

“Ohio class ballistic submarine, converted over to carry cruise missiles and Special Operations troops! Damn, Nick, I never thought I’d get to see one, much less ride in one.”

I knew what he meant. Although Ryan held the rank of Master Chief in the Navy, he had actually been a civilian when the Apocalypse broke out, and had lead Team Five as a civilian right up until two years ago. Then when his brother and cousin were killed, he had accepted a direct appointment as a Senior Navy NCO. It was a favor I had twisted out of President Epson in return for saving his life, seeing how it was hard to give a civilian a Distinguished Service Cross. Now he was like a kid in a candy store.

“Just don’t start trying to have sex with a torpedo tube, OK?” Brit laughed at the crestfallen look on his face and his muttered “damn”.

We made good time down to Florida, cruising below the surface at around thirty knots. It was weird, because the crew of the
Georgia
had spent the apocalypse patrolling off the coast of America, and had actually launched a few tomahawks with nuclear warheads in a vain attempt to stop the undead hordes. So they hadn’t seen the devastation, though I knew it must have been hell for many of the crew, unable to communicate with their families. Some of the younger crewmen had joined the Navy after Z day, but they were small in number, and you could tell who they were by their pinched, lined faces.

“Yeah,” said Chief Gilbert as we ate in the Chief’s Mess one day (night?). “That was pretty rough. My kids made it through, but both of them were grown. Never heard from my ex, but I like to think she’s out there, somewhere. With red blazing eyes, rotting away and eating brains. Couldn’t have happened to a meaner woman!”

We laughed at that one, and he took a minute to light a pipe and continued. “Yeah, that was hard. We lost more than a dozen guys to suicide, and the Captain died from a heart attack. Thank God for the XO, he held the boat together. Then when we docked at Bremerton, almost half the crew deserted. Can’t say I blame them, though. Things were pretty crazy at the time. Most came back after the amnesty was declared. We’ve spent the last few years ferrying Special Ops guys and cleaner teams into and out of various derelict bases. Home ported in Providence right now.”

“Must be nice,” I said, looking around. “You’re all fat as hell!”

“That’s because we Navy guys know how to live life. Now pass me the butter.”

The only excitement on the trip was when the XO put up a video feed of the periscope. We watched in the exercise room as a cruise ship swam into focus. It was listing to one side, but still looked enormous on the screen. Whoever was on the scope zoomed in, and we could see the Disney logo on the hull.

“Oh boy, I went on a cruise on that ship when I was little!” exclaimed Shona Lowenstein. Her excitement turned sour as the view zoomed in further, to show hundreds of undead milling about on the deck. The view zoomed back out, and held steady on the ship for a minute. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a huge plume of water jumped up into the air, center of the hull, followed a split second later by another, closer to the stern. The ship started to settle, her keel broken, and soon slid beneath the waves.

One of the crew exercising with us answered our unspoken question. “There’s still a few like that, drifting around the ocean. More so in the Pacific. We take them out when they’re not too far off our course.”

“Yeah, but eight years later?” asked Shona.

“Big sucker like that will keep drifting for twenty years, trust me. Especially out in the middle of the doldrums. That one must have run into a storm and gotten blown closer into the coast.” He looked at her scarred face and pointed to his own, which had a pretty big burn mark on the jaw, a pale spot on his dark skin.

“Just be glad it’s not a tanker. We have to clear those of undead and then try to get them running; if we can’t, we burn them out with Willie Pete and then have to stand by to sink them. If you aren’t fast enough, something goes wrong with a timer, you can catch it pretty good, and there ain’t any place to go except into the water.” He didn’t say anything else, just went back to riding his stationary bike.

Yeah, it was a screwed up world we lived in.