Zombie Killers: Ice & Fire (6 page)

Chapter 16

“That, my son, is a LOT of zombies.”

“Agreed, and don’t call me son.”

We lay on a bluff, overlooking St. Johnsville on the other side of the river, about five kilometers away. I watched through binoculars as Doc and Jonesy argued, their breath making clouds in the bitterly cold air. Ahmed and Brit faced away, watching our back. 

“Stop it, kids.”

Jonesy smacked Doc on the leg and Doc punched him as hard as he could on the arm. Great, two muscle bound morons. “He started it.”

“Be serious. I make, well, I dunno, more than a couple thousand undead milling around down there. Maybe a lot more than. They seem pretty riled up, too. Even at his distance I could see them moving around.

Doc stopped punching Jonesy and held still. “Hey, did you hear that? Shhh” His hearing was always better than mine. We all lay still, concentrating. The wind shifted to the north, and carried the faint sound of gunshots to our ears. Individual shots, pop, pause, pop.

Survivors. That explained the crowd of zombies. They had been holding out for six months, despite everything. Maybe they had been foraging in town and had been caught out, or the horde had come up on them living in the town. Either way, they were screwed.

“Damn, sucks to be them. Ain’t no way anybody is going to get them out of there.”

I whistled for Ahmed to come up, and he handed me his rifle with its powerful scope. I scanned
the town, looking for the greatest concentration of Z’s. That’s where the survivors would be fighting. After a minute, I found it.

They had taken a large, four story brick building and fortified it, blocking up the lower windows and doors. The zombies had piled up around the building, mounds of dead. It was a good fight, and as far as I could see, they were in no danger just yet. Still, the firing was few and far between. I could see a small figure lean over the roof parapet, dropping bricks down on them.

“I see it. Just east of the center of town, old factory building” and I described the situation to them.

Doc pushed a big glob of
tobacco into his mouth and started chewing, his spit making a brown stain on the snow. I knew he only chewed when he was thinking. “We’re not going down there.”

I nodded, then stiffened. I had scanned the scope over the windows
. Taped to an upper floor window was a sign in big letters. SEND HELP. TRAPPED. MANY CHILDREN and a date four days ago.

“
Damn. Here, take a look. Top floor, right side. ” I handed Doc the rifle, and he gazed for a minute, then let his breath out in a low whistle. “That kinda changes things a little bit.”

We slid back down the hill to where Brit was waiting, and I filled the team in, then got on the horn to Task Force Liberty Operations.

I explained the situation to the S-3, he promised to call me back in a few minutes. While I waited, we planned out a course of action to rescue the civilians. I knew the Task Force had half a dozen heavy lift CH-47’s, one of which could easily carry forty unarmed people.

The phone rang, and I answered, expecting the S-3 again. Instead, I heard the voice of LTC MacDonald.

“Agostine, the 3 tells me you have a large, concentrated target at St. Johnsville. I want you to call corrections for artillery fire.”

I stared at the phone, dumbfounded. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right.

“Excuse me? We’re supposed to be talking about rescuing civilians. What do you mean, corrections?”

He sounded exasperated. “I mean, we are going to blow the shit out of a whole bunch of zombies. You said there were thousands there.”

“Yeah, but what about the survivors?”

“Alleged survivors. That could just be a trick to suck someone in. Your team just tangled with some of those vicious bastards a few days ago, lost some guys, if I remember right.”

“Sir, with all due respect, you’re sitting back at the FOB, and I’m right here. It’s no trap. Send a bird in, we can have them out in a half an hour, then you can shoot the hell out of anything you want.”

“Listen, Agostine, you goddamned cowboy. I have a shipment of those new BB rounds for the 155’s
in Firebase Tillery, and this is the only chance we will get to test them out on such a target rich environment.”

I held the phone away from my ear. This guy was off his rocker.

“No, Sir, I will not call in corrections for artillery fire. Those are CIVILIANS out there. It is our JOB to protect and defend them!”

“Sergeant, you WILL do as ordered, or I will have you goddamned COURT MARTIALLED! Do you hear me? If not, I am going to
order the artillery to fire a Sweep and Zone on that whole town. In fact,” and I swear he paused for dramatic effect “that is EXACTLY what we are going to do.”

“You SON OF A BITCH!”
I yelled into the phone, but it had already gone dead. I ran back to my pack, where I had a SINCGARS FM radio, and punched in the Fire Support Channel. Dammit, I couldn’t remember the call sign over at the new Firebase.

“Tillery Redlegs, this is Lost Boys, over.”

“UNIDENTIFIED STATION, THIS IS SNOWMAN THREE NINER. SEND YOUR TRAFFIC.”

Great.”Snowman three niner, this is Lost Boys Six. We are a scout team assigned to Task Force Liberty. Check with your operations NCO.”

“ROGER, LOST BOYS. WAIT ONE.”

I paced back and forth in the snow, the minutes ticking away.

“GO AHEAD, LOST BOYS.”

“Listen, there are civilians in St. Johnsville. Do NOT fire on the town. I say again, DO NOT FIRE.”

“LOST BOYS, IS YOUR LOCATION IN OUR TARGET AREA, OVER?”

“Negative, but there civilians in the area, over.”

“ROGER, UNDERSTOOD, BUT LIBERTY SIX JUST GAVE US A DIRECT ORDER TO IGNORE YOUR TRAFFIC. SORRY. SNOWMAN THREE NINER OUT.”

I felt more than heard the THUD THUD THUD THUD of a platoon of 155mm howitzers firing at that moment. I threw the handset on the ground and raced up the hill, just as the rounds started bursting over the town.

Chapter 17

We sat and watched through the clear winter air. The explosions came in bursts of four, mixing high explosive ground bursts with BB rounds cracking high up in the air. The BB rounds sent a shower of thousands of steel ball bearings down at the ground, like a shotgun canister. The rounds were the newest thing in our inventory, based on the old claymore mine. Very little shrapnel, but the idea was that the steel pellets would cover a wide area and hit a vital part of a Z’s brain.

As I watched through the binos, I paid special attention to the building where the
survivors had sheltered, wishing there was some way to warn them. The artillery started at one end of town and walked its way through, methodically destroying structures. A Sweep and Zone was calculated to cover every square foot of an area with shrapnel, and the four guns pounded the area. After several volleys, they had moved up to the building, and as I watched, a pair of HE shells detonated after plowing through the roof, blowing the windows out and partially collapsing the structure.

“I can’t watch this anymore.” I handed the binos over to Brit, who lay next to me. She focused them for eyes, and then whistled.

“Whoo boy. That’s some bad shit right there. How the hell did we ever lose the war if you could blow the crap out of everything?” Doc took the binos from Brit and started to explain.

“Well, in the first place, even against regular troops, artillery is never going to kill everyone. Ever read that book, World War Z?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, they did get one thing right. Shrapnel doesn’t do much against zombies. Zips right through their dead flesh. You have to put the rounds down on the ground, so the concussion jellies their brains.
That, and it takes a LOT of ammo, something we just didn’t have on the ground here in the states. Our stocks were really low from the wars in the Middle East.”

Ahmed interrupted. “Fire, breaking out in town.”

“Yeah, I see it” said Doc. He continued on.

“So, yeah. At first they didn’t want to use Napalm, but like you saw back in Herkimer, eventually. Didn’t want to damage infrastructure, and there was hope that populations could be saved. Eventually
civil order broke down and a lot of military units just melted away. Remember that, Nick?”

I knew he was trying to distract me from what was going on below, but I kept seeing my daughters face in the children that I knew were dying down there. I just nodded to him and grunted. 
  

“Then we pulled back, set down a barrier in the passes over the Rockies, and cut the Pacific Northwest and Northern California off from the rest of the continent.”

Brit scratched her armpit and rolled away from him, sitting up. She couldn’t watch anymore either, but she wanted to continue the conversation.

“So what the hell has the government been doing for the last six months?  The Army?”

“Well, we have forty million people crammed into three states. Factories running full blast. Bases expanding like crazy, more than a million troops in training. We have the rail line from Boise to Green Bay open, and we cleared Buffalo. Scout teams like us are going around the country, securing important materials, contacting survivors.”

Down below, the shelling had stopped. A pall o
f smoke hung over the town, and fires burned here and there. In the middle, a Stewarts shop burned like a torch, the gas tanks ruptured.

“Damn, I was hop
ing to get some ice cream” said Ahmed. “I love Stewart’s ice cream”

“When the hell did you ever get Stewarts ice cream in Guantanamo Bay?”
asked Jonesy.

Ahmed
just smiled his inscrutable smile and said “It was a very long walk from Cuba to Buffalo.”

“Yeah, well someday I want to hear about that escape from Gitmo.”

Behind us, the radio in Jonesy’s pack squawked. “See what the hell they want. I don’t want to talk them.”

After some conversation, Jonesy signed off. “They want us to go down there and get an effects report.”

I looked out over the valley, watching the smoke rise.

“Yeah, I guess we have to. What’s a few more
undead to plow through, more or less?”

Chapter 18

We went at first light the next morning. The fires had burned out, but their heat had melted all the snow, and the water had refrozen, creating large sheets of ice in the street. We had to move cautiously, and several times one of us slipped on the ice, large packs dragging us down.

Our
objective, of course, was the brick building, or what was left of it. It hadn’t caught fire, but it was a wreck anyway. Glass crunched underfoot, shards lying mixed with the ice. We approached cautiously, but moved down the center of the street, avoiding the shattered doorways and windows on either side that might hide zombies. It left us open to snipers, but better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

The undead lay all about, in scattered ones and twos. They were perforated with dozens of small holes all over their bodies. Several still moved, an
d we shot them as they crawled or stumbled towards us.

“I’d say those BB rounds worked pretty damn well” said Doc.

“Yeah.” I kicked one to turn it over. A young woman, finally at rest. She almost looked peaceful; her clouded eyes still open, staring at nothing. The red glow had gone out. I reached down and closed her eyes.

A shout brought me up short. “Doc, we got a survivor here!” Brit was bending over a figure that lay just outside the doorway
of the brick building where we had seen the signs.

“
Perimeter!” I shouted, so that we didn’t all get in Doc’s way. Ahmed and Jonesy took up positions facing outward, and after a few seconds and a look from me, so did Brit.

The man was bad off. A belt had been twisted around his leg, and beneath it
half his calf was blown away. He had a puncture wound through and out on his neck, and the entry and exit wounds were swollen shut. Blood spilled from his mouth as he labored to breathe. Doc turned him over, looking for other wounds. The man was clad in the remains of an Army Combat Uniform, and a soiled patch on his sleeve represented the 53
rd
Troop Command, a New York Army National Guard command. His name tag said GUIDO, and he wore Staff Sergeant rank.

“Hey, Sergeant.
Wake up, brother.”  I poured some water over his mouth, and his eyes flickered open, then they closed again. Doc shook his head.

“He isn’t going to make it, Nick. Blood loss, shock. His heartbeat is weak and fading.”

He woke up again, and whispered “Water.” I gave him some and he coughed up more blood, then started talking.

“
Guido. One Oh... One Oh Seventh MP’s. We held out. Waited for you. Heard you coming on the radio. The helicopters” he coughed “drew the zombies to this end of the valley. Caught us.” His eyes closed, but he reached up and grabbed me by the neck.

“We … waited…for you… our kids … told them we … were rescued. You killed … them. Killed us.”
With his last strength, he spit in my face. He let me go and fell back onto the concrete. Doc reached over and felt for a pulse.

“He’s gone.”  
 

I sighed and stood up. Someone had a lot to pay for.
This didn’t have to happen. I reached over and tore off the bloody velcro American Flag off his uniform and slipped it into my pocket.

“OK, lets’ go in, look for survivors.”
We snaked our ways through the debris, weapons at the ready, moving up a stairwell. The first few floors were empty, the damage getting worse as we moved upwards. The stairwell stopped abruptly just below the last floor, the steps hammered away. A bloody aluminum ladder, the one Guido had used, lay toppled over. We set it upright and climbed.

I was first up the ladder, and I stopped the others. The whole place stank of blood and cordite, a smell I knew
all too well. Scattered around the floor were more than two dozen bodies, some still clad in the remains of uniforms. Others were in civilian clothes. Many of the bodies we far too small.

“Doc, Ahmed, come up. Brit, stay down there with J.”

“Hell no, I’m coming up” she said, and started climbing the ladder.

“Suit yourself.”

She climbed up the ladder, looked around, and threw up. I walked over to the closest small body, but the kid, a young boy, showed no signs of life. I turned to Doc, after he had finished checking the other bodies.

“Any?”

“No. Those BB rounds, well, they work. All too well.”
The corpses all had dozens of small holes in them, and the floors were slick with blood.

“OK then.
Pile them in the center, and find something flammable. There has to be some gas around here. Pop a Willie Pete on them and let’s go. I’m not leaving them to be eaten by crows.”

Brit stood over one
small body, a baby. Tears were streaming down her face. “How could they do this, Nick? You told them. YOU TOLD THEM! We’re supposed to be the good guys, Nick! ”

“It’s war, Brit. We are the good guys. Just, some of us aren’t as good others.”
I thought back to the kid I had executed a few days before. Yeah, some of aren’t that good. We just do what has to be done.

Three hours later, we headed west towards Fire Base Tillery. Behind us
the funeral pyre of Brits’ innocence burned brightly.