Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (9 page)

Luke had heard people argue that war was “kill or be killed” but that wasn’t accurate as far as he was concerned. War was “suffering so those you love don’t have to” far more than a mere survival choice. A subconscious loathing had driven him to kill the infected since the beginning of the outbreak, but he didn’t hate the man he’d killed on the bridge. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to do anything like that again, but until Barnes was destroyed he wo
uld have to be prepared kill enemies in whatever form he encountered them. The lives of everyone he cared for depended on his willingness to use lethal violence without hesitation when faced with anything, or anyone, who threatened them.

After several moments consid
ering Jack’s words, Luke gave a tiny smile and said, “Thanks. Thanks for everything. I was, like, a toddler when you were in Afghanistan, but I guess some things never change. It’s not easy to reconcile the necessity of killing some abstract enemy with the reality of killing a regular person—somebody who could have been a friend or a neighbor under different circumstances.” He looked up at the sky, avoiding eye contact with Jack. “And thanks for worrying about me . . . it means more than you know.”

“So how do you feel right now?” Jack asked.

Luke raised and lowered one shoulder as he replied, “That guy on the bridge could have ruined our mission, and a week from now a hundred thousand hunters would be in Indiana, heading toward Fort Wayne. He should have made a different choice; I don’t regret mine.”

Jack nodded
, “If your arrow had hit one second later that guy would have been able to warn his buddies. We’d have had that car for cover, and the AKs they were using would have cut through that little thing pretty fast while our rounds got buried in the SUV they were behind. So thanks for saving my life.”

Luke shrugged again,
but a slight smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Probably won’t be the last time,” he mumbled.

Jack chuckled, “
I’m counting on that, smart-ass.”

Chad Greenburg’s convoy of modified SUVs and pickups, taken a month earlier from a lot in Toledo, pulled off the road on the Indiana side of the bridge at just past two in the afternoon
. Jack could hardly believe how quickly they’d made the trip. In the old world, it would have taken at least four hours to make the drive; in the new world such a distance was often seen as impossible to travel, likely requiring weeks of furtive, night-time marches. These hardy veterans from Buffalo had just completed the post-apocalyptic journey in an almost unimaginable eight hours. As the veteran soldier from Buffalo led his fighters in a column over the bridge, Jack and the others met him half-way across.

“Took your time, Sarge,” David quipped. “If we’d have made that kind of time from Toledo to Fort Wayne
, Jack and the rest of these guys would be dead. What took you so long?”

Greenburg laughed as he explained, “Found an open McDonalds just north of Muncie and the guys made me stop. Otherwise we’d have been here by noon.”

“Seriously, though,” Jack interrupted, “How’d you get down here so quickly?”

“Went fast where the roads were open, and used the off-road capabilities of our wonderful vehicles where they weren’t. Didn’t bother to stop and deal with the packs that were following us, either. Well, once we started getting close
to the river we shot them with .22s, but that was it. Figured you had enough trouble without us leading a bunch of flesh-eaters onto your precious bridge.”

Jack slapped the tough commander on the back and declared, “Well, we’re really happy to see you
guys. I left an SUV back in town here that we need to reclaim.” Jack tossed a set of keys at Greenburg. “At your convenience, would you mind sending a couple of your certified stunt drivers to pick it up? I’ll draw a map to the dealership—it’ll be the only zombie-proofed vehicle on the lot.”

“Should I have my men pick up anything else
while they’re in town? Thermal underwear? A few pretty girls?”

Jack grinned, “
We’re good on the underwear, so skip it unless the girls can bring some dowries of heavy explosives.”

By the time darkness had settled over the area,
two of Greenburg’s men had returned with the SUV. The rest of the contingent had managed to build a wall of shipping containers and dumpsters nearly twenty feet tall between the bridge railings. The structure was truly formidable, and with Greenburg’s troops guarding the roadblock and the prisoners, Jack was free to meet Lori and her team when they arrived via Blackhawk a few hours later. The tough EMT had spent two tours of duty as a combat medic in Iraq, but given her facility with handguns, on this mission she was more valuable for her marksmanship than her healing abilities. Not counting Luke, she was the deadliest fighter from David’s group.

Jack had asked her to lead this mission because he knew how tough and composed she was in and out of combat, plus he
knew her husband would come with her. Blake was a former firefighter and SCA enthusiast whom David considered one of the best river-pilots in the entire settlement. Though the two were loving parents to their ten-year-old daughter, Jenny, and her orphaned friend, Addison, they knew that the best way to provide any kind of future for their children was to stop Barnes, and the infected, as soon as possible. Christy’s mother, Trudy, had agreed to watch over the girls in Lori and Blake’s absence. Jenny and Addison were told that they were going to spend a few days helping Grandma Carboni with the horses at the well-guarded ranch back in Noble County, and the prospect of working with horses blinded the girls to everything else that was unfolding around them.

Lori had recruited
Todd Evans, a former Army sniper, and Gabe Fox, an ex-Navy officer, to round out her team. It was clear to Jack that Lori had chosen well. The only change he felt he needed to make when Lori’s team arrived was to switch Marcus for Gabe. The Navy-man was a stalwart fighter who had the heart of a lion, but he didn’t have Marcus’ experience with explosives. The personnel change put two Rangers and at least one experienced river pilot on each team, and Jack had complete confidence in both groups.

All of the team members, along with Chad
Greenburg and his squad leaders, sat down to discuss the mission one last time. Jack took the lead by explaining, “I’d like to find one bridge over the Mississippi where we can make a stand—“

“Don’t you mean the Ohio?” Todd interrupted.

Jack shook his head. “Actually, we’ve updated our strategy a bit. We’re not letting Barnes cross the Ohio, but it’s in our best interests, long-term, if we don’t just stop there. I’d like to find one bridge over the Mississippi where we can make a stand. Hopefully we’ll find a strong settlement of survivors near one of the spans. Once we choose our location, every day we have to prepare will be critical. That’s why I want to keep Barnes occupied up here along the Ohio as long as possible. He’s an evil son-of-a-bitch but he isn’t stupid, not by a long shot. As soon as he realizes we’ve stopped him here, he’ll head west as fast as he can.”

Luke raise his hand with a question, “What if he just stops and tries to repair one of these bridges? Or maybe even build a temporary one of his own?”

“Well,” Jack offered, “I don’t think he can stay in any one place for more than a day or two; he has to keep those hunters on the move. There were more cattle than humans in the pre-outbreak world, and God knows how many other types of livestock. As long as Barnes keeps his flesh-eaters moving they can live off the land, but the minute they stop the supply problems begin. So, in answer to your question, we’d try to sabotage his efforts.

“Anyway, we need to find a defendable location along the Mississippi, preferably with at least a railroad bridge to facilitate the reinforcements
and supplies from Utah we’ll need if we’re going to fight. At that point, we’ll fortify as best we can and prepare for battle. If worst comes to worst, we’ll retreat across the bridge and blow it.”

Luke
again had a question, “Why do we have to fight Barnes at all?”

A few v
oices echoed the same concern so Jack responded carefully, “We need to kill him and his cronies. We could try to simply contain him with rivers and mountains, but I see two major problems with that. First of all, Barnes will just go on with his march of terror across the entire south with that army of his. How many more Americans, brave, strong Americans, who managed to live through the outbreak, are we going to let fall into this maniac’s hands?

“The second problem is one of time. The longer we wait to confront Barnes, the stronger he’ll become.
Eventually he’ll have the entire eastern seaboard, and the area south of the Ohio river, under his control. Sooner or later he’ll establish a beachhead on our side of the river and march north. Hell, General Sherman’s army could have done it in a few hours a hundred and fifty years ago; how long would it take Barnes to build a pontoon bridge once he actually thought about it?

“No, time is his greatest ally in the long run. Eventually he’ll have thousands of humans working for him, using terror to keep them in line. They’ll figu
re out ways to get at us. Plus, we all know that if Barnes was willing to spend a few months north of the river with his choppers he could put together a massive army with just some of the hunters still roaming the Great Lakes states. We simply can’t afford to give him the time to figure all that out and make new plans. He’s here now, and he wants to kill us more than he wants anything else. We need to lure him along to a place of our choosing and fight him there.

“We’ll be doing other things too. We have a lot of Rangers and other Special Forces types, and honestly, most of
the rest of our fighters are as good as the pre-outbreak veterans are by now. This war’s reeducated all of us on what works and what doesn’t. We get Barnes focused on chasing us to the Mississippi and we’ll be doing damage behind his lines as he extends himself. We’re going to use small teams to disrupt his advance.”

Jack finally stopped, worried that he was forcing his plans on a lot of very intelligent, insightful soldiers who probably had plenty of their own good ideas. But everyone gathered together became very quiet
until Chad Greenburg stepped up beside Jack and began to speak.

“I’ve known this kid most of his adult life, been to war at his side against monsters and humans. I know I ain’t the smartest dude in this little army of ours, but I’m willing to follow Jack’s plan.”

He looked at his squad leaders before continuing, “What do you think, men, you with me?”

They a
ll nodded and shouted, “Hooah, Sarge! Rangers lead the way!”

Greenburg chuckled as he considered the fact that most of
them hadn’t even been in the old Army, but he had to admit that they were all as good as any Rangers he’d had the honor of going into battle with. He then looked at everyone else, “Me and my men were overrun in Buffalo—I gotta score to settle with Barnes. Some of you here tonight helped save our asses over there, so you saw what it was like to have an army of hunters thrown against a settlement full of women and children and old folks. It ain’t pretty. Just knowing that he’s been doing this all over the country keeps me awake at night. Personally, I’d rather die fighting the bastard right now than live the rest of my life knowing he’s still on the loose.”

There was nothing more to say after Greenburg finished. Anyone
who argued against Jack’s plan could be seen as enabling Barnes, whether it was true or not. Jack also realized that he now had a great recruiting speech already prepared for groups of survivors he hoped to encounter as they moved west. The die was cast; the Fort Wayne fighters were no longer simply defending their settlement, they were going on the offensive.

CHAPTER 6

Profoundly outnumbered in enemy territory, darkness was the best ally Jack and his fighters had in their efforts to halt Barnes and his army. Hunters weren’t particularly active at night, a characteristic that many observers believed was due to the virus having no great impact on human eyes. The flesh-eaters tended to hole-up in packs, often against the side of some type of structure, and sleep during the hours of darkness. Any people in the area working for Barnes, or otherwise hostile, would also be mostly blind without any technological intervention. Jack’s soldiers
, on the other hand, were all equipped with at least basic NVGs. With this advantage, their operational schedule was the exact opposite of that used by their enemies.

Well before midnight
, Carter and his team of David, Bobby, and Gabe departed on their trek toward Cairo and beyond. They were followed almost immediately by Lori and her group of bridge-blowers: Todd, Marcus, and Blake. Their first objective lay about forty river-miles downstream, a large bridge in Hawesville, Kentucky. Carter and his soldiers had left first in order to scout a portage site around a dam that lay about a mile upstream of the span.

Being back on the water put David in a melancholy mood.
Some of the most terrible memories he fought to keep at bay had been forged near portages along the Maumee River between Toledo and Fort Wayne. His group had lost Luke’s stepdad, Jerry, skirting a dam near Defiance, Ohio. Christy’s father had been killed at a dam in Fort Wayne. David felt responsible for both deaths, though he knew it was practically a miracle that any of them had made it from Cleveland to Fort Wayne under the circumstances. Now he was piloting another group of friends toward an unknown portage on enemy ground.

David
couldn’t stop thinking about Jerry. Though, in truth, they hadn’t know each other very long, David still considered the sensitive-yet-rugged cop one of the closest friends he’d ever had. He wondered what Jerry would want him to say to Luke about the boy’s true paternity—would it be a blessing or a burden for Luke to know that his mother had purposely misled him about his biological father? Luke practically worshiped Jerry—would he feel disloyal to Jerry’s memory by accepting Jack as his true father? And what if something happened to Jack? Luke could end up losing two fathers, which, to David, seemed an especially cruel fate.  With neither Luke nor Jack along for this leg of the mission, David knew he had time to figure out what he should say to whom, or even if he should say anything at all. Finally, the dam came into sight, and he welcomed the interruption of the thoughts and questions that so often plagued him when he was alone.

They had
some choices at the dam. Maps showed what looked to be a simple, short portage on the Kentucky shore, and several massive locks along the Indiana side. Carter assumed that the locks were constructed of concrete, and while they all hoped that the portage was clear, the walls of the locks could also be used to get around the dam. Marcus and Bobby were no strangers to water travel with David; they had travelled the Maumee to Lake Erie together in order to deliver a radio to the settlement on Middle Bass Island. During the journey, the men had quickly developed an ability to communicate almost wordlessly, which was certainly an advantage against hunters who relied mostly on sound to locate prey.

As they approached the dam
, David guided the boat close to the Kentucky bank. He was worried that they could possibly get caught up in the strong current and be sent crashing over the structure, and his unspoken concern informed Bobby to be alert for such a possibility. As it turned out, the portage was short and open, an easy carry for the men as they ferried their gear and supplies back and forth until they were ready to continue downstream.

By then Carter had received a radio transmission from Lori and was

able to spot her boat about three hundred meters above the dam. She could see him too, and followed the glow stick he’d set on a large rock to guide her in while he and the rest of his team set up a security perimeter. Once again, the movement around the dam went quietly and quickly, and soon the two groups were ready to resume their trip toward the Hawesville bridge. David breathed a huge sigh of relief when they left the bank and assumed that Lori and Blake felt the same way he did.

The two boats approached to with
in about four hundred meters of the Hawesville bridge before going ashore on the Kentucky side of the river and beginning a search for good observation positions. Within an hour, Carter and Lori believed they had all the information they needed. They reported seeing a Blackhawk as well as a small roadblock almost exactly like that found near Brandenburg. Nobody believed that they would be able to gather any new intelligence from this group of scouts, and Bobby and Todd were all for putting their U.S. government-paid shooting skills to good use without risking a close-quarters confrontation with armed, enemy humans.

David
and Blake had no stomach for deliberate killings, especially when considering how easily the chopper crew in Brandenburg had been captured. Marcus and Lori were neutral on the issue. Carter decided that keeping the pilot alive was definitely in Fort Wayne’s best interest, but that the soldiers on the bridge could be put down at the first sign of resistance. He left Gabe to keep watch over the boats while he led Bobby and Marcus out to deal with the guards.

Lori put Todd in charge of capturing the air-crew
seen sleeping near the Blackhawk, trusting that his Ranger-instincts were better suited to the stealthy approach they needed than her medic training. She was a bit worried that Barnes might have set up some sort of trap for them until she remembered that Jack had convinced the pilot at the previous bridge to answer radio calls normally following their interrogation the night before. Since then, Jack’s troops had been supervising all communication to and from the location. The people here were almost certainly convinced that everything was going according to plan—they had no reason to suspect otherwise.

Sure enough, the pilot and crew-chief were found camped out
in a tent next to their chopper, and they didn’t put up an ounce of resistance when roused from their sleeping bags at gunpoint. The problems began when they heard the door of the Blackhawk slam shut behind them.  Lori quickly approached the helicopter and tried to see who was inside. Her life was saved when the captured pilot shouted, “That idiot will shoot!”

Two years in a combat zone had taught Lori t
o respond immediately and automatically to danger, and the desperate urgency in the pilot’s voice instantly convinced her that something was dreadfully wrong with this situation. She lunged to her left just as a burst of gunfire erupted from inside the Blackhawk, bullets ripping through the air where her face had been just half a second earlier. Before she could tell them not to, David and Todd instinctively turned their weapons on the chopper to try to eliminate the threat. Their small-caliber rounds failed to reach the enemy soldier huddled inside, but the inexperienced militiaman panicked and slid open the opposite door to escape. That should have been a positive development, but nobody realized that the guard had tossed a grenade into the cockpit as he jumped out.

The explosion was deafening and shocking, but the sturdy Blackhawk protected the people standing outside from serious injury by holding the shrapnel in. Again, what
had seemed to be a good thing turned out to have a dark side, as a howl from the small town led the crew-chief to exclaim, “That bastard just blew up our transmitter and alerted every creature within earshot that we’re here!”

It took a
moment for Lori and the others to process the extent of their problem, but then David exclaimed, “The helicopter’s transmitter was keeping the hunters away, and now it’s destroyed!”

“Damn everything to hell!” Lori shouted, her voice nearly drowned out by the report of rifle-fire from the bridge.
She knew that the guns were ARs, and she realized that when Carter heard the dust-up at the chopper-site he had ordered the guards taken out. A chorus of howls closer than the first floated to their ears, and Lori understood they were now in a familiar type of danger. “Get to the bridge!”

By the time they reached the roadblock,
pulling the Blackhawk crew along with them, the members of Lori’s team were trying to brainstorm some way to salvage the mission. They needed time to blow the bridge, but it sounded as if a thousand hunters were about to descend on their position. Two vehicles parked between the railings proved that these guards had a bit more sense than those captured the night before, but there were still five-foot gaps on either side of the makeshift barricade, and hunters could easily climb over SUVs.

To make matters worse,
both teams had left their helmets back in the boats with absolutely no time to retrieve them. Carter was waiting for them to arrive with one of the vehicle’s doors opened, shoving the two prisoners inside while calling out, “Pull the bodies of the guards out in front of the roadblock . . . give the hunters somethin’ to chew on if they come up here—might slow ‘em down fightin’ over dinner.”

“Where’s Bobby and Marcus?” L
ori quietly asked as she watched David drag an enemy’s corpse around the inadequate barricade.

“They’re wirin’ the bridge,” Carter explained,
“but we’re gonna have to buy ‘em time.”

“How much time?”

“Don’t know, but least a half hour . . . maybe a lot more’n that.”

“There’s no way—
” Lori began to argue before Carter cut her off.

“We’re gonna find out! If we can’t
hold ‘em off we’ll make a run fer the other side of the bridge and try to swim out to the boats. Hopefully, Gabe’s got ‘em both in the water by now. I already radioed ahead and told’m to head out to the middle of the river.”

“All right,” Lori conceded
with a heavy tone of doubt in her voice, “I guess it’s time to find out how good we are.” She looked to the captured pilot and crew-chief. “What do you think we should do with these two? The fact is they just saved my life back there.”

“That complicates matters a bit,” Carter observed. “Woulda been easier just to shoot ‘em, but now that seems purty ungrateful. Tie their hands and tell ‘em to stay in the vehicle
, outta sight on the floor, and keep quiet. If they’re lucky we’ll be able to thank ‘em by savin’ their sorry asses.”

The same light wind from the north that had aided Jack and Luke during the previous fight
the night before now worked against the bridge-blowers. Dozens of hunters were congregated around the burning Blackhawk, all of them roused to a fever pitch after catching the grenade-tossing guard and tearing him apart. Even though there had been no evidence that the human sense of smell had been greatly improved by the mutations wrought by the virus, several of the alphas were staring toward the roadblock with their noses in the air. David believed that the monsters could smell the distinctive odor of blood from a long distance, or maybe one of the beasts saw the bodies of the guards lying dead on the bridge. The bottom line was that a few seconds later one of the creatures roared in the way they all did when they spotted prey, and then the monsters began running toward the roadblock as they realized fresh meat was nearby.

As Carter had planned
, the flesh-eaters went after the bodies of the guards lying about ten meters in front of the SUVs he and his fighters were silently hiding behind. For a moment they all hoped that the hunters would be content with the feast laid out for them, but with dozens of the creatures roughly jostling each other as they tried to grab a hunk of flesh, several of the smaller monsters were eventually pushed up against the vehicles. The hungry beasts loudly slammed into the sides of the SUVs while snarling in frustration. The experienced warriors from Fort Wayne remained quiet, but one of their prisoners let out a yelp of fear that attracted the attention of the flesh-eaters at the edge of the frenzied mob rapidly devouring the corpses.

The t
wo small hunters roared with excitement and hunger as they redirected their attention to the interior of the SUV. Every flesh-eater not already busy consuming the dead guards quickly joined the pair as they pounded on the vehicle. Though the men tried to conceal themselves in the back seat, it was a futile effort once they had made a human sound. Carter accepted that their attempt to hide was now ruined, and quietly hissed, “Fire,” before opening up on the creatures with his pistol.

All of the fighters had ARs or shotguns with them, but
they hoped that by using only the silenced, small-caliber pistols they would be able to kill many of the infected while they were still eating the bodies in front of the roadblock. Lori and Carter were the best handgun marksmen in the group, so they had positioned themselves behind the hoods of the SUVS and were dropping hunters with nearly every shot they fired. Blake and David had their halberds in hand and were defending the gaps between the rear bumpers of the vehicles and the edges of the bridge. Todd was roaming from railing to railing with his .22, picking off the monsters that managed to crawl over the barricade.

For the fir
st several minutes of the assault the hunters charged as individuals like they always did, and they were easy pickings for the seasoned group of killers awaiting them behind the SUVs. The battle took on the air of a shooting gallery, with the burning helicopter perfectly silhouetting the attackers as the soldiers fired away at them. Two of the creatures had managed to crawl over the roofs of the vehicles, only to be immediately dispatched by Todd, who was able to take his time and make the deadly head-shots. Lori and Carter each killed at least half a dozen of the infected, including a number of monsters still feasting on the guards’ ravaged corpses. Blake had speared three hunters who’d attacked his position at intervals, probably because he was backlit by the moonlight. David stood unmoving in the darkness, watching the entire action take place to his right, unnoticed by a single hunter during the short-lived massacre. Even the aircrew inside their jail-vehicle had calmed down as they watched the monsters steadily drop to the cement, killed with a rapid efficiency which stunned them into silence.