APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (21 page)

             
“I’m sure they do.”

             
“You can call me John, though,” he whispered trying to smile, then added, “Can I have some more water?”

             
“Of course you can, John,” she said softly and was glad she hadn’t put two in his brain pan.

     
Chapter 19 - Fish in the Barrel/ Corpses in the Pool

Cincinnati
, Ohio 

              The Queen City burned. Everywhere buildings blazed, explosions and gunfire rattled amidst the southwestern Ohio city. A thick black smoke hung heavily over the charred remains of the city.  The Reds would have no spring training this year. Corporal Shere Howard doubted very seriously that the Reds would ever play again.

             
Shere’s make-shift unit was a necessary mix of jarheads, soldiers, sailors, airmen and even militia. The military had been decimated in the past three months and Cincinnati had been the death of thousands of men and women in digital camouflage.

             
She scanned the intersection of Lexington and Sixth Street with her night vision monocular. She knew the threat; Lexington Avenue had become a haven for gang bangers after the outbreak, and like most inner city gangs they had emerged as local super-powers. They were well-armed and not afraid to use those weapons, but soon they found that their power was short lived. Gangs lacked a tactical strategy, discipline, and logistics for anything long term. Gangs had long used fear, terrorism and large amounts of bullets to wage their wars. They used these same tactics on the zombies but they had not adjusted their strategy to account for the utter lack of fear these lumbering hordes had. They would expel massive amounts of ordinance to dispatch small groups of the dead, effectively cutting them to ribbons, but the dead kept coming. In any siege warfare on a castle position the battle isn’t the breaching of the walls, but the attrition of resources; food, ammo, water, medicine, etc. Every passing day meant the gang’s fortress became weaker while the dead grew stronger.

             
Corporal Howard had been in the 2
nd
Marine Expeditionary Force, or II MEF, for the past two years. She was well-trained, disciplined and highly motivated and now, under Martial Law, Cincinnati was her town. She wanted to protect her city but it was rapidly approaching the point of no return. She hated to admit that the last resort may end up being nuclear.

             
Unfortunately for her, the Marine Corps had taken its casualties as well as all the other branches of the armed services. Being the smallest branch, its casualties were far fewer than the Army, but it equaled in its percentage. The Air Force and Navy would soon become virtually obsolete without the oil piping in to fuel its great mechanical beasts, with the exception of some nuclear subs. But with the slaughter and subsequent transformation of those that had served with honor, the Army and Marines were split up and sent to lead squads of the under-trained National Guard troops in major cities. There were already some cities that were deemed unsalvageable and had been ordered nuked. Among those so named were New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Boston.

             
Corporal Howard’s dark skin glistened beneath the search lights of choppers and flares that seemed to flicker and float in the night sky like angry ghosts. She wasn’t convinced that doing this type of work at night was a great idea, but she followed orders no matter how insane they seemed to be. She would trust her training and guts to get her through. She was a Devil Dog, the nickname that the Germans had given the Marines in World War II.

             
She pushed these thoughts aside and re-focused her attention to the task at hand.

She led her squad of weekend warriors through the town and wondered how much longer it would be before the brass called it quits. Her squad had previously been assigned to
Lexington, Kentucky and was truly bottom of the barrel troops; too stupid for office jobs and too undisciplined for the field. Lexington hadn’t stood a chance. She knew that if she hadn’t been brought here to lead them that they would have been fodder in less than a week, probably less than a day. They were all in need of a haircut and a shave, and an education wouldn’t have hurt them either. Racists and sexists, she had seen them for what they were in the first fifteen minutes. Already they, well, not
they
;
he
, Private Dwight Riley. The others Private’s Givens, Dawson, Greer and Mason had simply tittered laughter at the redneck’s comments. She had no choice though, they were her charges and she would do her job, even if she secretly believed they should be shot in the face.

             
She whispered into the hands-free headset, “Riley, bring the men about and watch my six; I’m going in.” She tipped the barrel of her M4 toward the direction of the Queen city YMCA; she knew there was a gay joke in there somewhere, but she didn’t smile.

             
“I’ve been watching that sweet brown six all night, baby,” was the response that whispered in that sickening, slow, hillbilly drawl, through her ear bud.

             
She glared back in his direction even though she couldn’t see him and shook her head in amazement. If they had been back at the squad-bay she would have knocked out that one good tooth of his and made an example of him in front of his in-bred butt buddies.
Son of a bitch,
she thought, then leapt from her crouch and ran to the side of the front door. The glass had been completely shattered from its metal frame and lay, glittering on the tile floor of the Y like diamonds beneath the chopper’s spotlight.

             
“Riley!” she whispered hoarsely. She waited a moment then tapped the ear piece with her index finger. Her hands were gloved in Kevlar except for the trigger finger. “Givens, Dawson! Get your asses up here!” she whispered viciously into the mic, her lips curled back from her teeth. No response. She looked toward the Hollcroft building from where they had been positioned, straining her eyes against the night for movement. She grabbed the monocular and quickly peered into its green night-vision aura and saw that no one was there.

             
She knew in her gut that they had left her there. She was angry that her orders had been disobeyed, that she had been disrespected by those miscreants, but still she found herself relieved not having to baby sit them anymore. She would be faster and safer without them dragging her down. When she got back to base she would deal with them but, for now she had a job to do. She glanced up to the support chopper and gave them the thumbs up. The chopper wheeled starboard and rose, leaving her to the darkness. She was happy that her skin was so dark at times like these. Not African-American or some other politically correct horseshit like that. She was a black woman and a damn good one at that.

             
She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of sulfur from spent gunpowder. She loved that smell. It wasn’t napalm in the morning, but it would do. She snapped her carbine up to eye level, scanning the lobby of the health club with the fixed LED flashlight that was mounted beneath the barrel of her M4. She stalked forward, methodically sweeping the rifle left to right to left, her boots crunching on the broken glass as she slowly side stepped forward. The blood was a stark contrast on the white almost sterile tiles of the floor and white painted drywall. Littered on the floor was a few of the dead, done in with headshots and one had been decapitated.
Thorough
, she liked that; at least someone knew that it was best to make sure the dead stayed dead. There were also four dead gang bangers, two of them still held their weapons in frozen death grips, the others lay on the floor among them with an AK-47 and what appeared to be an old police issue .38 Special. The remains of the gang bangers were partially eaten, as were the remains of a police woman, whose face hung from the bones of her cheek, making her look like a macabre version of Billy Idol sneering up at her. One of the eliminated zombies still held the remnants of the dead woman’s left ear clamped between its yellow teeth, a large gold hoop piercing its lobe. All of these corpses wore the gruesome head wounds like Hindus, which had finished them for good.

             
Seeing this, the corporal felt nothing. Over the past few months she had witnessed every manner of carnage imaginable and had quickly become desensitized to it.

             
It appeared that the zombies were more effective than McGruff the crime dog had been at putting the kibosh on crime in Cincy. She continued down the long corridor. There were drag marks of streaking blood on the floor. Light danced in blue and white ripples on the ceiling leading the way to where the gymnasium’s competition swimming pool lay. She heard the tell-tale moaning and groaning of the dead from within and she ducked her head in and glanced left and right to make sure there was none too close; there wasn’t. She scanned the left side of the pool room and saw six of the dead tearing at the carcass of a SWAT member, rending it of its clothes and armor to get at the meat beneath. She looked to the right and saw that direction was clear. On the opposite side of the room from where she stood was a larger group of the dead. She estimated another seven of them and she let out a soft sigh as she noticed that there were probably another thirty or so of the walking dead submerged in the depths of the pool, searching for an exit, as they  thrashed about like some bizarre under water ballet. The pack opposite her caught her scent and immediately began moaning an alert, a sound that she had grown to despise. She didn’t hesitate any longer, but opened fire, picking her targets methodically, dispatching them with headshot after headshot. She turned her attention back to the SWAT member and scratched her targets quickly and efficiently. She was beginning to sweat; it dripped from her forehead and rolled slowly down her face. She knew that she had to hurry; her gunfire and the alert call by the zombies would assuredly bring more of the dead to her position and she couldn’t allow herself to be cornered.

             
As she turned her attention back to the dead in the pool, she suddenly felt a flash of pain at the base of her skull, beneath the cover of her Kevlar helmet, and then everything went black.

              The brightness of dawn flooded her vision from the opened window. She tried to speak but all that came was a muffled sound. Confusion clouded her mind for a few moments before she realized that she was bound and gagged.

             
“Howdy Corporal,” said Pvt. Riley amiably then turned up a bottle of Jim Beam and drained three long gulps. He swallowed with an audible
Ahhhhhh
before turning his attention back to her.

“
Not such a hard ass now, are ya?" She glanced at Givens and Dawson; they looked scared and guilty, while Riley just looked ugly with a noticeable flush of liquor on his freckled cheeks. "This here's what we southerners call seceding from the union."

             
She strained against the gag that was tied around her head. Riley pointed to his ear and shook his head. “Can’t understand a word you’re sayin’, bitch. Must be that Ebonics shit you people are always talkin’.” He sauntered over to her and hunkered down beside her head. He reached to her and yanked the gag from her mouth.

             
She spat at them.

             
“I’d be nice to me if I were you…” Riley began in that high pitched drone.

             
“Cut me loose or so help me...” she hissed in a forced whisper that cut his threat off, and glared at him with hatred so heavy that her gaze could barely hold it, although hold it she did, and it never wavered.

             
He shook his head smiling. “Oh, I'll cut you loose alright, but first I'm gonna teach you some damn manners; teach you to respect your betters.”

             
She had never wanted to kill anyone so badly. Never had she felt such rage. She wanted to curse them, but had no words to match her rage; all she could do was utter a wordless scream of fury and frustration. She forced herself to breathe, taking long deep breaths and somehow calmed her shaking as much as she possibly could and again forced her voice to a whisper as she said. “You lay a hand on me and I will
kill
you,” she looked at Givens next, “…and you…” then to Dawson, “…and you…” she said, then eased her head back onto the carpeted floor and closed her eyes.

             
He stoked her forehead with the edge of his hand. “Here’s what’s gonna happen: I’m gonna beat you like a bad slave for a while, then I got this Uncle over in Parkersburg, West-by god-Virginia and I figure I’ll let him have a go of it. Uncle Drew’s an odd bird, but I think you’ll like him."

             
“I’ll …” she started.

             
Riley cut her off with a quick punch to her mouth, then he drew his index finger before his lips, “Shhh…I know, I know…you’ll kill me.” he finished for her, forced the knotted gag to her mouth and stood up with an evil grin and a sly, knowing wink.