Zombie Killers: Ice & Fire (5 page)

Chapter 13

Jonesy recited the relevant section of the new Universal Code of Military Justice. “Failure to maintain vigilance while on patrol or guard, resulting in the death or serious injury to any fellow service member, is to be punished by death.”

It was a harsh rule, but we had been taught some hard lessons fighting the undead. They never slept. Ever. Letting your guard down could destroy a team, a company, even a whole battalion. One single zombie getting into a perimeter had the potential to infect everyone around.

Brit spoke up. “I’ll do it” she said and pulled out her knife. I held up my hand.

“No, this is my job. I’m the team leader. You guys go pack up. Jonesy, bring him into the bedroom.”

Jonesy stood him up, and half carried, half dragged Collaton into the room, sitting him down in a chair. Then he turned and looked at me.

“I can do this, Nick. You don’t need this on your conscience.”

“No,
you can’t, Jonesy. You’re a civilian. Send Doc in here to witness. Go on, get packed, we have to move.” He nodded and walked past me. Doc came in right after him, and switched on. I turned and faced the camera and started talking.

“Sergeant First Class Nicholas Agostine, Sergeant First Class Robert Hamilton, Private Jason Collaton, all assigned to Irregular Scout Team One, Joint Special Operations Command (Z), , detailed to support Task Force Liberty.

Fact, on the night of January 15
th
, 20--, Private Collaton was found to be asleep at his guard post, resulting in the death of Private First Class Joseph Hernandez and the compromising of the teams’ position.”

Doc turned the camera to himself. “I do hereby confirm this fact, having also witnesses Private Collaton’s dereliction of duty.” He then turned the camera back to me.

“Under revised UCMJ Article 113, Misbehavior of a Sentinel or Lookout, and Article 92, Dereliction of Duty, as Commander of IST One, as witnessed by my Second in Command, SFC Hamilton. I find Private Collaton guilty and sentence him to death or banishment. Due to the tactical situation, sentence to be carried out immediately.” 

I reached down and pulled the tape off Collaton’s mouth. He immediately started cursing me. I put it back on.

“Listen, and listen quick, I don’t have time. I’m going to give you a chance to tell me your last words, and pray if you want. Hernandez, who was a better man than you, is dead because of you, and for all I know, the rest of us will be dead soon too. You have a choice. I can leave you here to take your chances with the undead, or I can end it for you quick. Either way, you’re not coming with us. Do you understand? Make your choice, right now.” I pulled the tape off again.

“I’m sorry, I was tired. I didn’t mean it.” He was crying now.

“That doesn’t matter. Jesus Christ, face this like a man. Make up your mind.” Outside, I heard a zombie howl.

“Please, take me with you. I’m begging you, Sarge.”

“No. Make up your mind.”  He stopped sniffling and crying, and then he spit in my face.

“OK. I’m leaving you for the Z’s.” I started to get up, and he said “Wait, wait, OK. OK,
just let me stand up.” 

I helped him to his feet, and he stood straight.
“Do it, you asshole.  I should have stuck it to that redheaded whore when I had the chance. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You pissed off that I grabbed your woman’s ass?”

“No. You wouldn’t understand. I’ll lie to your parents and tell them you died well” I said,
lifted my gun and fired, once in the head. He fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes, all the life gone out of him in an instant. I couldn’t have shot him in the heart, he was wearing body armor. For a second, I stared down at him. Then I turned and grabbed my ruck, stuffing my sleeping bag in and making sure the shotgun was secured across the top and picked up my rifle. Doc secured his gear also, but then stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Nick, you did the right thing” he said, looking down at Collaton’s body in the dim light. “If he did it once, he’d do it again, and next time, it wouldn’t be one person dead, though that’s enough. It’s a different world, brother.”

I looked at him for a long second, and I could still smell the acrid smoke from my pistol and the bitter coppery tang of fresh blood, the smell of crap from his bowels letting go.

“This
different world sucks, Doc, it really does.” I hadn’t wanted to do what I just did, and maybe there could have been some other way, but right now, four other people depended on me making the decisions, right or wrong, and that’s just the way it was. I knew I would be dreaming about this for a long time. Maybe he would even become one of the ghosts that tormented me. I hoped not.  

“True story, brother. Now, we gotta go.” I nodded and went out into the hallway and down the stairs to relieve Ahmed. The rest of the team joined me in less than a minute.

“Brit, did you see anything outside?” She had gone up to the attic, and looked out using the Infrared scope on Hernandez’ rifle.

“Yeah, there three jokers camped out across the street, hiding behind some wrecked cars. I saw a zombie sniffing around down the street. Out back is clear, so far as I can tell.”

“OK, out the front we go then.”

Brit’s eyebrows shot up. “Out the front?”

“Yeah. These guys have been surviving the zombie apocalypse for more than six months on their own. Guaranteed that there is an ambush waiting for us out back. Ahmed, you know what to do.”

He didn’t even answer me, just moved over into the living room and took up a firing position. I readied a flashbang, pulling the pin and holding it in my hand. Doc held onto the doorknob, and counted down from three. At two, I let the spoon pop out of the flashbang. On one, he pulled the door open and I threw the grenade as hard as I could at the cars across the street. Doc slammed the door shut just as an arrow whispered through the doorway. Jonesy, standing behind Doc, said “Ow” under his breath.
We all looked down and covered our eyes, and the CRACK of the stun grenade rattled the windows.

A second later, Ahmed’s rifle coughed, twice, then
once again. I opened the door and rushed out into the cold night.

Outside, a half-moon illuminated the street. Two bodies lay on the far side of the pavement, and one man dragged himself slowly along the ground. Doc fired his pistol into him as we went past, more a mercy than ending a threat. 

The reason for the mercy showed itself down the other end of the block. A half dozen sets of glowing red eyes showed themselves, then a few more appeared in the distance. The started shambling after us, then broke into a run. We ran for a bit, and then I slowed the team. I didn’t want to run into more zombies coming the other way. 

“Um, guys, I think maybe we should run or something!” said Brit, jogging past me.  At that moment, a dozen men came around the corner of the house we had just vacated, running at full speed. The two groups crashed into each other with yells and zombie howls.
A melee erupted, blood flying darkly in the moonlight, gunfire flashing, shots echoing up and down the street. We stopped to watch.

“YES! I love it when a plan comes together!”

Jones limped over to me. “Yeah, well, how about we put some ground between us and this little party? I kinda took an arrow to my knee, yo.”

Chapter 14

The dawn broke with the thunder of rotor blades passing overhead. We had stopped just outside of the town to treat Jonesy’s knee. The arrow had passed just under the skin, and Doc snapped it in half and drew the razor sharp barbed end out, then sewed it shut as we huddled in a barn, out of the cold wind.

“Hey, Nick, check it out!” Brit had lookout, and she peered out of the slightly open barn door, watching the sky. I was busy trying to raise someone back at the base over the satellite phone. There hadn’t been any retrains stations set up between us and the Seneca Army Depot yet.

“I’m kinda busy. Just tell me what you see.” I expected maybe a Kiowa on a recon flight, but the rotors sounded too heavy and there was too many of them.

“Well, there’s, lemme see if I can count that high. Four, five, six, no, seven of those big ass double bladed bus looking thingees. They have a whole bunch of crap slung underneath.”

“You mean Chinooks” I said, shutting the satellite phone off in frustration and getting up.

“Yeah,
shithooks, or whatever you guys call them. Come see.”

I stood next to her and looked out the door. In the
dawn light, high up so they caught the rays of a sun that hadn’t reached over the mountains yet, seven of the big transport helos thundered across the sky. Underneath was slung a variety of A-22 cargo bags and vehicles, including 155mm howitzers and earth moving equipment. As I watched, they sped overhead, following the river eastward, and settled about ten miles away on top of a bluff overlooking a bend in the river.  

Just then the satellite phone rang. “Caputos’ Pizza, can I take your order?”

“Don’t be such a smart ass, Nick. I would kill for a pizza right now.” It was the Operations Sergeant Major from Task Force Liberty.

“Go back to Seattle, they still have some there, but it isn’t New York Pizza.”

“Enough with the bullshit, I’ve been up all night trying to get things laid on for the new firebase.”

“Yeah, the firebase you just so managed to not mention in our latest briefing?” I wasn’t ticked
off; I just wanted to pick on him.

“Hey, we got a lot of shit going on here, and you’re little bunch of peepers ain’t way up on my priority list. Stand
by; I got a new tasking for you.”

“Bend over, here is comes again. BTW, we’re down two. One KIA, and I had to shoot someone for falling asleep on duty.”

“Crap, the Colonel is not going to like that.” He sighed heavily. 

“Screw him he doesn’t like me anyway. The kid fell asleep on guard duty, and got another team member kill and forced us to evac our hide site.”

“Well, we can let JAG deal with it when you get back. Meanwhile, saddle up and get walking. You new orders are to recon St. Johnsville and points east until recalled. You’ll be operating out of Firebase Tillery for resupply.”

“Is that the monstrosity you guys are building up on that hill? For once, can you just build something someplace where we don’t have to hump all the way up and down?”

He laughed. “Tough crap. You know what it’s like fighting Z’s. Climb a hill and build a wall, brother.”

He had a point. Putting a firebase in a lowland area invited you getting overrun. The Army had taken to actually putting temporary “killing posts” in the middle of a town or city, pre-made out of shipping containers, with a ton of ammo and a platoon of soldiers. They sat there and shot Z’s till they ran out of ammo or were about to get overrun, calling fire support all around, then got evaced out. It was great for clearing an area, but one in twenty got lost. No thanks.
Firebases sat way up on a hill, with serious defenses, and were designed to provide communications, fire support, and whatever else was needed to sustain the clearing operations.

“Why are you calling it Firebase Tillery?”

“Buddy of mine, Kiowa pilot, went down in Iraq in ’09. Brave dude.”

“Understood. I forget sometimes about what happened before it all went to shit.”

“Yeah, well, we all do. Least this way Josh gets remembered.” We were both quiet for a few seconds, thinking about friends we had lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hell, before everything shut down, I think a couple thousand troops got left in the Stan. I hoped they made it home, or at least set themselves as bad ass warlords in what was left of Asia.

“OK, the S-3 wants you guys outside St. Johnsville by sun up two days from now, so I suggest you get walking. UAV Intel says there is a very heavy concentration of undead around the town for some reason, and the S-2 wants to know why.”

“How about a ride in one of those helos?” I had to ask.

“How about you shit in one hand and wish in the other, and see which fills up first?”

Chapter 15

I sat looking at a DeLorme Atlas, tracing a route to St. Johnsville.
A year ago, we could have driven it in twenty minutes, cruising down the Thruway. Now, walking from Ilion to St. Johnsville, we had a number of routes to choose. Military Decision Making Process, add up all the pluses and minuses, pick the best one. Or so it worked in theory. I called Doc over to help me figure it out.

“Option One, we cut back across the river, take Route 5N through Herkimer straight to Saint J.” He studied the maps for a minute,
and then shook his head.

“Nah, that’s a wash. We would have to cross too many bridges, which are choke points. Herkimer was a big city, probably more than a thousand undead in there. Hills cut off our escape routes.”

“Agreed. The only plus is that it’s got the least amount of elevation change, so best time. Plus it goes close past Firebase Tillery.”

“Which we’re not stopping at this time.” I ignored the dirty look from Jonesy.

Doc traced his finger across the map. “OK, Option Two. Straight down the river, following the contours.”

“Definitely out. No continuous roads, and in this weather, crossing a creek, we might have someone break through. Hypothermia is no joke.” Some of us were carrying almost a hundred pounds of weight.

“Well, last option. We take the Thruway.”

I thought about it. “Well, here’s the pluses. Wide open fields of fire. Even terrain, so less likely to have injuries. Likelihood of encountering Z’s is slim. Open areas for evac.
The downside is elevation. There is one hell of a hill between here and there.”

“And that is a problem how?”

I looked over at Brit. “How is she going to handle it? That’s almost 30 clicks; say little less than 20 miles, with some serious uphill. She hasn’t rucked anywhere before except for a weeks’ training back at SAD. ”

Doc looked over at her too.
“Well, she either hacks it, or she doesn’t. She’s pulled her weight so far. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“OK, Thruway it is, then.” 

We headed out cross country, walking around the remains of the town of Mohawk. In the distance, across the river, Herkimer was a burned out shell. I had done some research on google before we left, checking out what few news articles that existed. There had been a vicious battle at Little Falls, where a platoon of Army National Guardsmen had fought to the last man, running out of ammunition after holding for three days. They were swamped on both sides by a horde that has pressed in from Utica and one coming up the Mohawk Valley. The last Youtube video posted had shown hand to hand combat, uploaded by a reporter who had gone off the air a few seconds later. Herkimer itself had taken hundreds of tons of Napalm, and the river itself had burned for days.

Now, the snow had covered all the burnt bones and charred timbers, and the landscape looked pristine in the cold air. On either side of the dirt road carved by countless tractors, corn stalks sat frozen, never harvested. 
We moved as quietly as we could, but the snow crunched under our boots. Thankfully we just had one hill to cross before we got to the Thruway, but as we crested the rise, the corn shook and a figure bounded out of the field about two feet from me. We all dropped on the spot, rifles at the ready. My adrenaline shot way up, and I got knocked over when a deer crashed into me. It bounded out over the road into the field on the other side, and I lay there looking up at the sky, my pack holding me to the ground. The entire team burst out laughing.

“Hey there, turtle, want
a hand up?” Jonesy reached down and pulled me up.

“Bite me.”

“Ohhh, a SNAPPING TURTLE, hahah!”

We kept marching, reaching the Thruway by noon, and headed up into the hills. At one point, we had to rappel down over the edge of where a bridge had been taken out by a cruise missile and walk gingerly across the ice covering a stream. I hated crossing running water, since currents could leave pockets of thin ice.
Then around and up the other side.

All this expended a tremendous amount of energy. Moving over snow, climbing up and down ropes, carrying a hundred pounds of weapons, ammo, gear and supplies, trying to stay warm when we took breaks and the sweat cooled your body faster than you could keep up. We were wiped out by the time we had done ten miles, because we had to move slowly and cautiously, watching everywhere for zombies or other threats. In front of us, the road climbed up a huge hill.

“Damn, I wanted to get over this before nightfall.” That time of year, it got dark very early, around 16:30. I had planned on us camping out in whatever remained of a rest stop on the Thruway, just over that big ass hill, but there was no way we would make it.

“OK, lets’ find a place, somewhere off the road there has to be a house or something.”

Brit came over to me, and said “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, that’s it.”

She blew out a steamy breath in the cold air. “This is a serious disappointment. We walk all day, no one gets shot, no zombies, no bad guys, my feet hurt and I have serious crotch burn from these stupid ninja underwear.”

“That’s more than I needed to know. What’s your point?”

“My point is, BORRRRRRIIIINNNNNGGGGG.”

“Haha, welcome to being a soldier, Ms. O’Neil. Most of the time, it’s boring. Stupifyingly, maniacally boring.”

“Well, then, my recruiter lied to me.”

Jonesy burst out laughing. “Hey, Nick, you done lied to me too! Where’s my bonus?”

“Suck it.”