The Zombie Wars: The Enemy Within (White Flag Of The Dead Book 8) (3 page)

Charlie didn’t like it, but he figured I was right.  We needed to deal with internal issues first before we dealt with external.

About an hour later, I was standing in front of a series of graves, all marked with the names of the fallen. Sarah was behind me, and Tommy and Duncan were there as well.  About a thousand people showed up for this service, and all of them were sad by the loss of their friends.

I started by reading the 23
rd
Psalm, then I spoke for a few more minutes.  I didn’t bother with any clichés or talking about the greater good.  I just spoke about how these were people who fought for a cause they believed in, and in this cause, sometimes we died.  It was a damn shame, but it was the truth.

After the burial, Charlie and I went back to the campaign office where we called in the security detail from the night before.  There were questions we wanted answered.

Four men and two women stood before us. I brought out my pick with the knife still in it and the night vision goggles.  I got right to the point.

“The pick is mine.  The other two items came off a man who was in camp last night uninvited and obviously unchallenged by anyone on duty last night,” I said. “I’m not going to waste time with scary stories of what ifs. He got in, he got out.  The only reason we knew he was there was because my son happened to see him outside our trailer.”

Charlie chimed in.  “And he tried to kill John.  Anyone want to start off, or should we just chalk this one up to stupid, and let you guys deal with it?”

One man stepped forward. “Our apologies, sir.  Won’t happen again.”

Charlie looked at him for a full minute before answering.  “Apology accepted.  You will deal with this lapse, and if anything like this happens again, you will all be sent back to the capital to spend the rest of the war trying to explain to your families and friends why you are there and we are here. Understood?”

The threat of public shaming was very real to these people, and none of them wanted to face their peers for screwing up so badly.

“Dismissed,” Charlie said.  None of the six had the guts to look me in the eye.  I was angry, but my anger was diminishing at the mystery we had in front of us. 

“Who do you think it was?” I asked.

Charlie shrugged.  “No idea.  Could be a lone survivor who spent too much time alone or someone part of a larger group trying to figure out who the hell we are.”

“Both viable options.  Would that I could have secured him for questioning,” I said.

“Wishful thinking,” Charlie responded. “You know as well as I do there isn’t anything worse than a man wanting very badly to leave someplace. Remember that guy in Oak Forest back home?  He practically crawled up a vent shaft to get away.  Nothing was going to stop him.”

“No kidding. If he had to eat through a brick wall, that would not have stopped him. Changing the subject, are we ready for the assault on Cedar Rapids?” I asked.

“Just about. We need to get the three groups in place, but that shouldn’t take more than an hour.  Where do you want to be with this one?” Charlie asked.

“I’ll take the group from the north.  We’ll clear the suburbs out on that end while the earth-movers take care of boxing in the city,” I said.

“Good enough.  I’ll be on the East side, and Tommy will take the Southern end.  Duncan will be working with the earth movers, and he wants you to know he has a few ideas he’d like to bounce off of you,” Charlie said.

“Do you know what these ideas might be?” I asked with more than a little trepidation in my voice.

“I do, but I’m going to keep still to see if you have the same reaction I did,” Charlie said.

“I’m so lucky to have a friend like you,” I said. 

“Yes, you are.”

“Go kill something, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

An hour and a half later I was on the north side of Cedar Rapids fully geared up and looking for trouble.  The homes looked like the same kind of homes you would find in any other city or suburb.  It really struck me how much the country looked alike once you stopped for a minute and seriously took a good look at everything around you.

Four fighters were with me, and we were the point of our group, walking into infected territory and setting up the zombies for killing.  Behind us was a battalion of fighters going into homes and killing zombies. Behind them was another battalion bringing in support for the first battalion.  The third battalion was cleanup and catalog.  Any usable supplies were taken by the third group, and anything we didn’t need we just left.  Others in the area might need what we left behind.

The drill was constant.  Hit the door, open it, and back away.  Usually we had the chance to put some distance between us and the infected coming out to say hi, but sometimes we didn’t.

I was back with the other four while the door opener, a hulking brute of a lad, kicked the door in to a small ranch house on what would have been a very nice street.  Even under the dead grass and the trees still holding on to their morning frost in their shaded areas, the suburb seemed like it would have been a good place in different times. Wide lanes for cars, and tree-lined easements with many wooded lots gave the impression this once was a well-to-do section of town.

“Back up, Sam!” barked the squad’s leader. Steve Mendez was a tough man to please, but he kept his squad alive.

Sam dodged back as three zombies worked their way to the front of the house.  A man, a woman, and a teenage girl all came slowly out of the house.  They moved stiffly, as if the act of walking hurt them, but they kept coming anyway. The man looked to be in the best shape, while the two women were ripped and torn.  The mother’s gut was torn open, and I could see she was missing a few organs. It didn’t take too much imagination to figure out who had turned first and then turned on the others.

Steve took out the man, cleaving his skull with an axe handle that had two spikes driven through it. Sam took the teenager down, just slamming a knife through the top of her skull. I killed the third, using a side swing and the pointed end of my pick to let her rejoin her family in the afterlife.

“Keep moving, get to the next house!” Mendez said.

We moved to the next house, and this time it went more smoothly.  We came, we knocked, we got away.  It was a pattern that worked for us most of the time, however, there were forty-three graves that proved it wasn’t foolproof. We just kept going, up one street, and then the next.  Behind us came the sounds of combat and death.  We used the zombie’s tactics against him.  Where he once had the superior numbers, now we faced them two or three to one, and we avoided the major confrontations.  We weren’t going to win those, anyway. The cities we left alone, hemming in the zombies and leaving them there.  If anyone wanted something from the city after it was closed off, he was welcome to try it.  But don’t expect any sympathy when the mission failed.

Down the third street we found a house that was different.  It was boarded up tight with just a little space on the top of each window.  The doors were sealed shut, and I could see wedges had been pounded into place all around the door.   Not even three Sam’s and a Charlie could kick that door open.  It was a small, two-story house, the kind that a new family bought when they were just starting out. I walked around the house and saw the same situation in the rear.  Locked up tighter than a drum, and zombies surely weren’t getting in.

I looked up into the second story and saw that there were blinds drawn on all the upstairs windows.  On the roof, a well-maintained windmill spun silently, its gear shaft disappearing into the roof below.  If I had to bet, I’d say there was a small hand-cranked generator in there that was supplying a tiny bit of power to the house. 

“Moving on, sir?” Steve asked. He looked up at the windmill and scowled.

“May as well,” I said.  Whoever is in there isn’t going to open up for us, and if they’ve lived this long, they’ll figure out its safe sooner or later.”

We kept moving throughout the day, stopping briefly to eat something before pressing on.  I took my turn at the door kicking, and things went reasonably well.  We advanced around the city and stopped when we reached the point where Charlie’s group started.  That was it for the day. 

“Sir!  It’s time we headed back to the camp, sir.  Second battalion is cleaning up here.” Mendez was somewhat anxious, and I wasn’t sure why.

“All right.  You go on ahead, I’m going to see if I can’t find some high ground and have a look over the area,” I said.

“Sir, do you want an escort?” Mendez took his duties seriously, and usually that meant keeping me out of harm’s way.  I wasn’t having any of it today.

“I think I might be able to handle myself; thanks anyway,” I said, probably a little more forceful than I should.

“Sir. As you wish, sir.  Do you wish for me to inform anyone, sir?”

“Do that and I’ll be very disappointed in you, Mendez.”

“Understood, sir.”

I walked out of the subdivision and started looking up.  Off in the distance was a water tower, one of the larger ones.  While I would have preferred a building of some sort, I wasn’t about to go looking for one. Sometimes you just had to work with what the Lord provided, relatively speaking.

I started in the direction of the tower, and the direct path was going to take me through another subdivision.  I was okay with that, since I figured this one had been taken care of as well.  The doors on most of the houses had been opened, and here and there were the remains of the former occupants. When we killed them, we laid them out in neat rows so anyone coming behind us would know they were killed by us.  Anything that was not orderly was usually an indication that we had not been through there yet, and one needed to proceed with caution.

I walked down the middle of the street, and it was quiet enough that I let my mind drift a little. I thought about the road we were on and what it took to get here.  As usual, I had my doubts, but when I looked at the big picture what else was I supposed to do?  There was an old saying that in order for evil to survive, good men must do nothing.  Well, the ghouls were an evil, and I wasn’t going to do nothing.

I walked along, keeping an eye out for the tower, and that was when I heard it. It wasn’t much of a sound, like someone trying to suppress a sob.  I stopped my movement and closed my eyes, focusing on trying to hear another sound and finding its location.  It was a bit ironic that the zombies did kind of the same thing, only for some reason their hearing was better than ours.

There. To my left, maybe in a house.  I walked in that direction, straining my ears for another sound that would lead me in the right direction. If it was a survivor, I needed to find them.  If it was a zombie tactic, it was the best one I had seen so far, and I was falling right for it.

There it was again.  This time it wasn’t a sob, it was more of a snarl of anger or frustration.  I looked around and didn’t see anyone, so I went up to the split-level that seemed to be the source of the noise. The door was open, and I moved in, my bowie out in my left hand, while my right held my Glock. 

“Rrrr!”

That sound was loud, and it sounded very, very angry.  Knowing my luck, I was about to free some mutant Chihuahua that was going to tear my ankles apart. Zombies I could handle.  Freaked out little dogs drove me nuts.

I moved up the stairs and stopped as I saw a pair of boots.  They were facing away from me, and as I looked up I could see one of our fighters looking into a bedroom.  I could hear muted voices and a low whistle. Right away I had a bad feeling. I needed to get the lookout away from the door, and I needed something strange to get his attention. Pulling out my canteen, I sprinkled a little water on my hand. Stepping around the corner, I flipped water droplets at the man.

It took three tries, but finally the man stepped away, coming down the stairs, and looking up at the ceiling.  I waited until he was in front of me before I grabbed the back of his neck with my left hand while my right held the bowie to his throat.

The man’s eyes were huge, and when he recognized me, they got even bigger. 

“How many?” I asked. 

The man shook, causing my blade to bite his neck a little. He held up two fingers.

“Anyone hurt yet?” I asked.

The man shook his head ever so slightly.

I whipped the knife away and brought the hilt crashing down on the top of his head.  The man slumped, and I had to act quickly to keep his falling body from making too much noise. I cut his shoelaces to make makeshift cuffs and then headed back to the stairs.  I didn’t waste any time; I just took the steps in stride, and at the top of the stairs brought my gun to bear on the scene in front of me.

Three of our fighters were in there, two men and a woman.  One of the men was holding the woman by the arms, pinning them back and keeping her from moving.  Her shirt was open, and one breast was already exposed.  Sitting on her feet with a knife in his hand was the other man.  He was systematically cutting away her pants from her legs, one strip at a time.  The woman couldn’t move, and a dish towel had been stuffed in her mouth, keeping her from expressing the obvious rage I could see in her eyes.

“I’d say this violates most of the rules we have for conduct in the army,” I said. “Let her go.” I commanded, pointing the gun directly at the face of the man holding the woman.  The man on the floor shifted, and I kicked him hard in the head, knocking him over.  His knife slid out of his hand as his head bounced off the floor.