Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (13 page)

Two more grenades came flying through the air, followed by the staccato burst of someone opening up with a squad automatic weapon (or just SAW, for short). It was, quite possibly, the sweetest sound I had ever heard in my life.

“Come on,” Gabe shouted to me. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I followed him around the edge of the streambed, practically crawling to stay below the edge of the berm, and kept moving until we were out of the Legion’s range and somewhere behind our
own forces. Feeling a little safer, we climbed up the steep bank, drank some water, and took a moment to figure out which way we needed to go.

“Sounds like they’re up that way,” I said, pointing northward.

“I think you’re right,” Gabe replied. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

A few minutes later, Gabe stopped and knelt down behind a thick oak trunk, motioning for me to do the same.

“What is it?” I asked. Gabe flapped his hand at me to stay quiet.

“Blacksmith,” he called out.

A moment went by in silence, then from ahead of us I heard, “Eagle.”

I would have recognized that accent anywhere. We got up and stepped around the tree.

“Where’s Flannigan?” Gabe asked as Sanchez emerged from cover.

“Over here,” she said, standing up from behind a fallen log.

Sancho grinned. “What took you so long?”

“Got held up at that dry creek bed,” Gabe replied. “Come on, let’s find the others.”

I bummed a couple of magazines from Sanchez, reloaded, and followed them toward the sound of the fighting.

*****

It was mostly over with by the time we reached them.

Using exactly the same tactic the Legion had employed against us, Grabovsky had split his forces into three assault teams and deployed them in a pincer formation, spreading them out and surrounding the raiders at the top of the ridge. He led the main assault force straight up the middle, but occasionally slowed down and let the Legion hold its ground for a while. This used up a lot of ammo, but it gave the two squads moving up the flanks time to get into position.

The marauders, backed up against the top of the ridge with nowhere else to go, had tried to make a break for it by running down the steep hillside leading to the highway. Grabovsky waited for them to reach the bottom—where they were out in the open with no place to take cover—before signaling to the squads lying in wait to open fire.

It was a slaughter.

Two SAWs and about twenty M-4s opened up on them all at once, hitting them in a twin vector that pointed like an arrowhead toward the far side of the highway, and the escape that they would never reach. The raiders positioned on the other ridge and, while still trying to lay down covering fire, decided that discretion was the better part of valor and melted back into the hills. The G-man sent a few fire teams to find them, but they had disappeared.

Once the dust settled, it was clear that the militia had scored a solid victory against the Legion, but it did not come without a price. Four recruits were wounded, two of them seriously. Not wanting to waste time waiting for wagons to arrive, Grabovsky ordered the wounded carried back to town on litters. Half the platoon volunteered to help, which allowed them to set a running pace by rotating carriers every few hundred yards. I watched them hustle away and hoped that they would get to Allison in time. 

Just as they passed from view, the first distant moans of the undead slithered to my ears from the surrounding forest. I hustled back to where Gabe and Grabovsky were ordering recruits to round up the fallen cargo and stage it for retrieval.

“Hey G-man, I don’t suppose the helicopter is coming back this way is it?” I asked.

The muscles of his thick neck writhed under his skin as he shook his head. “ ’Fraid not. Fucking bullet clipped a hydraulic line. She’s grounded until we can get repair parts flown in.”

One of the recruits standing near us stood up straight. “Hey, do you hear that?”

Gabe looked in the direction the sound was coming from. “Yep. Sounds like the infected found us.”

He placed his hands around his mouth and shouted, “All right ladies and gentlemen, we have incoming. The walkers are on their way. We need to get this cargo squared away and take up defensive positions. LET’S MOVE.”

Hearing the moans made me remember my prisoner, and I slapped a hand to my forehead.

“Fuck me running,” I hissed.

Grabovsky looked at me. “Sorry, you’re not my type.”

“No, shit, dude, I totally forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“I captured one of them.”

“One of them who? The Legion?”

“Yes.”

He faced me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No.”

“Well, where the hell is he?”

“I left him tied to a tree.”

He stared incredulously for a moment, and then threw up his hands. “Well go fucking get him before the goddamn walkers do.” He turned and grabbed a couple of recruits. “You two, go with him. Prisoner retrieval, move your asses.”

I had a feeling that if Grabovsky’s cane had been in his hand, I would have felt the business end of it urging me on as I sprinted up the embankment on the far side of the road. Honestly, he would have been justified.

When I pulled back the cedar branches I had hidden my prisoner beneath, I half expected to find him dead of strangulation. As it was, he was lying on his side and shaking with silent sobs, tears dripping from between tightly squeezed eyelids. It was a good thing I reached him when I did. If the walkers had gotten any closer, he might have done something rash.

I grabbed his foot and shook him. “Rise and shine, buttercup. Time to get you out of here.” He opened his eyes, glanced around in consternation, and then nodded vigorously. I cut the cord binding his legs, and the one at his throat, then pulled the gag out of his mouth and helped him stand up.

“Think you can run?”

He looked at me and nodded again.

“Good. Now let’s get one thing straight.” I touched the barrel of my pistol to his temple. “Try anything, and you’re a dead man. Clear?”

He swallowed a couple of times, and gave a single bob of his head. “Okay.”

“Come on, let’s get moving.”

The two recruits Grabovsky had sent with me watched our six as we trudged back down the hill as quickly as we could manage. I kept a firm grip on the prisoner’s arm and marched him ahead of me, occasionally having to catch him to keep him from falling. The moans of the infected grew louder and louder as we made our way down and, as we emerged from the treeline, Grabovsky saw us coming and shouted at the recruits standing with him to hold their fire.

Three dozen gun-toting, hostile faces glared coldly at Grayson Morrow as I marched him through the perimeter and over to where Gabe and Grabovsky waited for us. The sight of the two grim, stone-faced warriors was enough to make his steps falter.

“Keep moving,” I growled, shoving the barrel of my pistol into his kidney.

I stopped him in front of Gabe, who looked the kid up and down briefly before turning his attention to me. “I want you to take him on the first wagon headed back to town. Get this kid to the police station and lock him up. Stay with him and let the sheriff know that this man is in federal custody.”

“You sure you don’t want someone else to take him?” I asked. “There’s a lot of infected coming this way. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

Gabe opened his mouth to speak, but Grabovsky interrupted him. “He’s got a point, Garrett,” he said. “Riordan can shoot the nuts off a hummingbird. We need him here.”

The hardness in Gabe’s eyes said that he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with the G-man’s logic.

“Fine,” he said, after a moment. “Have Sanchez and Vincenzo take him, but make sure they know to keep him safe. This prisoner is too valuable to lose to a lynch mob.”

I didn’t think it was possible for my prisoner to get any paler, but he proved me wrong. His arm trembled under my hand as I walked him to the far edge of the perimeter and passed him off to Sanchez.

“You’re off the hook, Sancho,” I said. “Find Vincenzo and head back to town with this guy as soon as the wagons get here.”

The scrappy Mexican glared at Morrow with open hostility and stabbed a finger into his chest. “The only reason you’re still alive,
cabrón
, is because I’m under orders not to kill you. If it were up to me, I’d chain you to a tree and leave you for the fucking
muertos
. So don’t give me an excuse.
Comprende
?”

Morrow kept his eyes down and nodded quickly, not daring to speak. I didn’t blame him.

With the prisoner in Sancho’s capable hands, I jogged back to the center of the perimeter where Gabe awaited. He stood atop an olive drab crate, peering northward with a pair of binoculars. I climbed onto the crate next to him and brought up my scope.

“You seeing what I’m seeing?” he asked without looking at me.

I took a moment to sweep both sides of the road as it wound around a curve in the distance, and let out a tired breath. “Couple hundred of them, at least.”

Gabe lowered his
binos and reached over to pat my shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, amigo. We’ve handled worse than this by ourselves. This time we got help.”

I looked around at the recruits. “Yeah. Yeah we do.”

They had arranged the heavy crates in a circle and taken position behind them. Flannigan and a couple of others had scrounged up a few entrenching tools and were busy filling sandbags to use as bench rests. That was good thinking on their part. Having something to prop their rifles on would help everyone shoot more accurately, and save ammo. I just hoped the factory zero on their ACOG sights was as good as the manufacturer used to advertise.

Not wanting to use up his limited supply of .308 ammo, Gabe swapped his SCAR battle rifle for Sanchez’s smaller and lighter M-4. The kid grinned as he handled the high-tech weapon, eliciting a stern warning from Gabe that if anything happened to his beloved rifle, he would visit a thousand flaming dooms upon Sancho’s head. The grin disappeared.

I walked to the northernmost edge of the perimeter and found a crate that came up to the middle of my chest, set my rifle on its bipod, and dialed down the magnification on my scope. After conferring briefly with the two shooters on either side of me to designate lanes of fire, I settled down over my rifle, took a deep breath, and waited. Ahead of me, a host of shambling, ragged figures began to appear from between the trees, filtering down the hillsides and onto the highway.

The landscape around us provided both an advantage, and a disadvantage. The natural steepness of the hills would direct the walkers down to the road—the dead tend to follow the
path of least resistance—but it also meant that the troops positioned to the north and south would have to bear the heaviest volume of fire. As the dead grew closer, Gabe noticed the same thing and began barking out orders.

Five people took up position on each of the two flanks facing the sides of the road, while the rest formed ranks along the blacktop facing north and south where the bulk of the infected would hit us. The idea was that each shooter would use up a full magazine, retreat to the back, reload, and wait for another turn on the firing line.

Looking out, I saw that they were coming at us from all directions now, shuffling and moaning toward the sound of food. The walkers began to bottleneck as they converged, the faster and more recently dead ones pushing their way past their slower, less mobile counterparts. None of them moved faster than a brisk walk, but then again, they didn’t need to. Their strength was their numbers, and the fact that they would never, ever, get tired. I did a few breathing exercises to calm my nerves and heard Gabe’s voice booming over the cacophony of moans.

“Remember, take your time and line up your shots,” he shouted. “Use the sandbags to steady your aim. Make every shot count. If your weapon jams, raise a hand and fall back. Either me or Sergeant Grabovsky will help you clear it. Keep your rifles pointed downrange at all times while on the firing line. If I catch you away from the firing line with your safety off, I will cram my boot so far up your ass you’ll taste my shoe polish.”

He was smiling when he said that last part, drawing a few smiles and nervous chuckles.

“Remember kids,” he went on, “this is just like we drilled. Stay calm, keep your head screwed on straight, and we’ll all get out of this just fine. Shooters on the front ranks, take up position and get ready to fire. Everybody else, check the person next to you and make sure your weapons and ammo are squared away before you step up to the line.”

The recruits did as he said, looking each other’s rifles over and loosening straps on mag carriers. The tension in the air lessened under the sound of hands patting shoulders, and voices reassuring one another that they were good to go. It was a simple ritual that banished nervousness and made the recruits stand a little straighter, taking confidence in the man or woman next to them. In that moment, under the glare of the midday sun, I understood something about the military that had, until then, escaped my attention.