Even Zombie Killers Get The Blues (Zombie Killer Blues) (2 page)

Chapter 3

“So, the night before we left the FOB, I hooked up
with this zoomie guy from that C-130 that came in…”

“You is a female manwhore, you know that, right,
Brit?”

We were walking slowly down the east side of the Hudson
River, on our way to Fort Edward. The west side of the river was a no-go,
fallout from the Knolls Atomic Power Lab semi-meltdown. It was probably safe,
but the river made a good line not cross until you were north of Schuylerville.
Our objective for the day was the south end of the Champlain Canal and the
railroad bridge over the Hudson. The Army Corps of Engineers weenie huffed and
puffed behind me, carrying too much gear. His problem, not ours. It made for a
slow march, though. 
“I’m just living life because I’m alive, Jonesy. So anyways…” and she rolled
her eyes at him “…remember how China was saying it was the West’s plague, and
they were going to shut their borders? Punishment for our decadent lifestyle
and all that shit?”
When the plague started and things in America were going to hell, China was
crowing about how they had sealed their borders and were sitting pretty, with
not a single case, and how the world was going to quarantine North America.
They had nuked London, Moscow and any other government that might stand in
their way and were rampaging through central Asia, conquering all the gold mines
and oil fields in Eastern Siberia. Their cyber attack on the US military command
and control on the second week of the plague had wrecked our nuclear response
forces, disabled every launcher we had. They sat back and took on anyone who
argued with them. They had landed forces in Central America after the US Navy
had pulled out of Hawai’i to reinforce the Pacific Northwest and had actually
started building a wall across Panama to keep Zs out of the Canal. Then the
plague broke out in Europe after a refugee ship from Mexico crashed ashore in
France, Europe went to hell and China started slaughtering
anyone
who
came near their borders. Then, a few weeks after that, all of the sudden China
fell off the air.
“So check it out. This guy, he’s a C-130 pilot now, but before, he flew B-2
bombers. No shit, they loaded up a whole crate of zombies on, like, a dozen
B-2, stealthed their way through Chinese radar and just air-dropped them over
the biggest cities. He said he almost got shot down `cause he had to go low and
slow, bay doors open while the Zs went dropping out of the bomb racks. They dropped
‘em right in the rivers with water-soluble ropes around them. One, two days
later, a couple of Zs drag themselves out of the river and start biting the
shit out of the little yellow fuckers. Instant chaos! Recon flights say the
whole place is a massive battleground now.”
“Damn, man, that some dirty shit,” said Jonesy, then laughed so hard his gold
teeth showed. Frigging gangbanger
would
laugh at something like that.
“That just doesn’t seem right. I mean, that’s a crime against humanity.” The
Engineer contractor spoke up through his heavy breathing, sweat pouring down
his face.

“Man, that ain’t no different shit than them chinks
dropping nukes on all them cities just because America was down and out, and
not watchin’ over everyone else no mo’.  Just like back in the `hood, you get a
chance to kick your enemy, you go do it.”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem, right.”

“
Sheeeyit
, Socrates, it’s just the way of the
world. People been fightin’ forever, and unlike your lily-white, suburb livin’
ass, I seen it my whole life.”
Conversations like this took up most of the march. We were soldiers, and it’s
what soldiers do, telling stories and talking smack to each other. We broke for
lunch at noon, out in the middle of a field with good observation. Three on
watch, three eating. The Engineer didn’t count. He was there for a job only,
and he knew it. The six of us were a team and he wasn’t on it. The smoke from
MRE heaters soon rose above the circle, and I sat back on a rock to enjoy the
spring sunshine, to casually assess everyone in the group.
Brit, eyeing the Engineer like he was a piece of fresh meat, wondering if he
was worth anything in the sack. She stood guard but would glance back at him
every now and then. Ahmed, cleaning his weapons like he did every stop. Legacy
of living in that dust-ridden shithole they called the Middle East. Jonesy,
picking his nose and flinging it at Ahmed, trying, and failing, to piss him off. 
Doc Hamilton, that big bald ex-biker who was our medic,
stood with his back to me, watching towards the river. Syzmanski, the
newest guy, who had shown up at the river fort one day a month ago on the run
from the FEMA camp outside Albany. We didn’t ask what he did to get him on the
run and he never told us.
After twenty minutes the guards switched out and I stood to take my turn. After
a few minutes of watching the road, I heard a blood-curdling shriek erupt from
inside
the perimeter. As I turned back toward the sound, the Engineer dude came
tearing past me, pants hanging low, half of a zombie kid holding on for dear
life trying to chew a chunk out of his ass. I stood open-mouthed as he ran
past. He was trying to knock the thing off him with an unfolded E-tool,
probably the one he had been using to take a crap. Jonesy stepped forward,
faster than me, and swung that big steel rod he carries right at the guys’
legs. Down he went, and then Jonesy was beating the brains out of the Z before
it got a chance to scream.
“Everybody up! Weapons Hot! Doc, check him out! AND SHUT HIM THE FUCK UP!”

The team was up already in a 360 perimeter. Doc Hamilton
ran over to the Engineer, who lay on the ground yelling “OH MY GOD!” over and
over. The Doc took one look at his wound, stood up, pulled his suppressed .22
and shot him in the head. The guy flopped once more then lay still. I stood in
shock for a few seconds at the speed of the whole thing, then snapped out of
it.
“Doc, take his tags, any personal effects; Jonesy, you and Syzmanski bury him.
Then split his equipment up around the squad.”
I had screwed up. I hadn’t assigned anyone to keep watch over him and now the
guy was dead, killed by a stupid mistake. He had probably just dug a cat hole
and not checked the brush or tall grass around him. Like I said, Zs are animal-smart.
It had probably waited for him. Damn, just goddamn.  I hung my head down and watched
them dig a quick, shallow hole and roll his body in it. You just assumed that
someone who had survived this far in the post-plague world would know you never
went anywhere alone and you always checked out the area you were in.
Brit walked over to me, wanting to know what to do next.

“Hey Chief, it could have happened to anyone. You
can’t babysit everyone and it was the chain of command that saddled us with
him. Are we Charlie Mike?”  She was asking if we were continuing the mission.
“Yeah, I suppose we have to. Just a sucky way to go.”

“I know, Nick” she said, then punched me as hard as
she could in the shoulder. “Now suck it up and let’s go. You know it’s a hard
world we’re living in.”

“Yeah, I know … if you can call it living.”

Chapter 4

“Empire, Empire, this is Lost Boys, over.” I let go
of the hand mike and waited 30 seconds. Stupid radio watch back at Fort Orange was
probably stuffing his face.
I tried again. “Empire, Empire, this is Lost Boys, over.”
“Kilo 39, this is Gulf 38, use proper radio procedure, over.”

“Yes, because the Zombies are listening over the
secure net, over.”
There was a long silence. I pictured the fat fobbit running to his commander.
Sir, those stupid civilian scouts are on the radio again, they are being mean
to me
.
“Lost Boys 6, this is Empire 6, SITREP, over.”
Great, the Task Force Commander, LTC MacDonald, aka Jackass. We love each
other. Actually, we frackin’ hate each other. Mutual disrespect based on
numerous incidents of his stupidity and incompetence.

“Well, Empire 6, we lost our Engineer asset, over.”

“What do you mean lost, over.”

“Lost, gone, finished, dead, over.”

“Dead how, over?”

“Cessation of heartbeat due to interdiction of
cranial matter by copper and lead alloys, over.”

“Don’t be such a fucking smartass,
Agostine.”

“Empire 6, please use proper radio procedure, over.”

The line was quiet for a full minute. I pictured
Jackass smashing things in the TOC. He was notorious for throwing things at
subordinates. I couldn’t help messing with him. I knew the fact that he needed
me and my people and couldn’t do anything about me sent him ballistic. I was
actually trying to get him to have a stroke.
“Lost Boys 6, this is Empire 6. What happened to your engineer, over.”

“Bitten by a zombie, we had to neutralize him,
over.”

“Way to fail on the job, Lost Boys 6.
I’ll make sure you write his wife, over.”
God, that man
was a prick.

“Can do, Empire 6. Are we going to get another
asset? Over.”

“Negative, no air assets available.
Continue Mission, Lost Boys. Out.”
Had to get the last word in. Jerk. I stuffed the hand mike back in Syzmanskis’
rucksack and turned off the SINCGARS radio. 
“I think you two should kiss when next time you meet. Just give him a big, wet
sloppy kiss.” called Brit over her shoulder as she moved to take up point.
“Give him a reach-around.”

“Such a pig.” I muttered.

“OINK OINK!” she called back. We moved out down the
broken road.

Chapter 5
We stood over the Route 4 bridge and watched the water flow underneath. It was
clear, clearer than I had ever seen it before. Clear and toxic. Not as bad as
downstream, but there was a sheen of oil slick across the top. Millions of
gallons of heating oil, industrial chemicals, toxins released by houses
decaying. The engineers testing the water figured it would be close to a
hundred years before it was drinkable. The streams draining into the Hudson
were almost as bad. Who would have thought clean water would have been an issue
after the Zombie Apocalypse? Another thing the movies got wrong. We knew of one
good well on the east side of the river, a mile south of here. A hand pump into
a deep well, but in a few years the ground water would be contaminated by
rusting gas tanks and underground oil tanks. From here on out we would have to
hump our water, which is heavy as shit. On a hot spring day in Upstate NY,
humid as hell, humping seventy pounds in a pack, you wind up soaked to the bone
with sweat in about ten minutes.

Jonesy and Hamilton stood pissing into the river.  

“Damn, Jonesy, This water is cold.”

“Deep, too. You can’t play jokes like that on a
brother, Doc!”

Brit rolled her eyes at both of them. “Boys.”

I took point, walking down the west side to the
lock. We ran into two Zs stumbling down the main road. The first went down from
a head shot from my rifle. The second was walking away, upwind from us. Brit
took her out with a shot to the back of the head and we stepped around the
still-twitching corpse. Doc flipped the first over and took a picture of her
face for the National Database. It would go in the missing file, where the
software would try to match her face. Not much, but it sometimes answered
survivors’ questions. Maybe a one in a hundred got photographed, and one in ten
of those got ID’ed. Better than nothing, I guess.

A quick note about our rifles: They’re
standard, Army issue M-4s that have been rechambered to take a .22 caliber Long
Rifle round, with a bit more charge than a regular .22 LR. Instead of the usual
combat load of 180 or so .227 rounds in a regular M-4 load-out, we each carry 600
rounds of .22 Longs in 50 round magazines. We could also use them in our
pistols and if we have to, we could use scavenged .22 rounds. It’s impossible
to find any .227 rounds anywhere but .22’s are still pretty common in the ruins
of sporting goods stores and gun shops.
One thing you need when
fighting zombies is ammo, and plenty of it. No one is that good to hit a Z in
the head every shot, and, especially in combat, it is more like 3 or 4 rounds
before you put one through their heads. Another thing they got wrong in the
movies.  

~ N.A.
We heard the howling long before we got there. It grew slowly with each step we
took. It seemed to sink right down through our teeth into our bones. The Zombie
Moan.

Jonesy stepped up to the edge first and looked over.

“Hollllllyyyyyy shit, Nick, come get a look at
this.”

I tapped Ahmed on the shoulder and he took my sector,
looking back down the road. I walked over to the edge of the canal lock and
looked into the water ten feet below. It was filled with Zs, floating, standing
on top of each other, clawing at the concrete wall. The doors of the lock were
closed and they had wandered in there from the town. Hundreds of them. Packed
in, rotting, bloating. They saw us and started in a surge towards us, piling on
top of each other, pushing each other down into the water. Jonesy started
popping them in the head with his pistol but I told him to stop and not waste
ammo.

“Damn, Nick, this shit creeps me out. What are going
to do about this?” I noticed his accent had gotten softer and he was more
serious, like it always did when we were discussing a fight.

“Leave it. Take pictures of the canal doors, check
out the pump house and the electric machinery, get pics of everything, spray
the crap out of the electrical system with the silicone. We gotta keep the
stuff in working order but the Zs are going to be Lieutenant Colonel Jackass’s
problem.”

“Do you want to open the doors? Let this shit drift
into the river?”

“Fuck no. Do that and when we get back to the COP in
Stillwater they’re going to be crawling all over the wall. We’re upstream. They
can’t swim but they can wash up.”
He shook his head and spit on the Zs trying to climb at us. “Didn’t think of
that. This here city boy can’t get directions straight, you know me.”
I walked back to the guys, picked my ruck up off the ground and rummaged for my
Nikon.
“Hey Nick, check it out!” Brit pointed and we caught sight of a bald eagle
soaring high overhead. The wildlife was coming back strong but I hope it didn’t
eat too many of the fish from the river.

“No doubt, the plague was a good thing and bad
thing. Make the best and drive on.”
Brit bumped fists with me. “Make the best and drive on.”