Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (13 page)

Hiram nodded to Sal. “Those other Smith brothers, Carey and Tom, have set up a terrific little shuttle for us. We boat up to a park not far from a damn—“

“Johnny Appleseed Park,” Deb interrupted. “They keep several vehicles there, so you tie up your boat and drive to the checkpoint near The Castle. Take 33 to 9; Vickie knows the route if she wants to tag along.”

“I think they want to get rid of me
for a while, Sal,” Christy said lightheartedly. “Can’t say I blame them. So are you up for a little trip? I have a gut feeling that Manitoulin Island could be helpful to us in the future. Plus, just imagine if it were possible to find a place not destroyed by the infected . . .”

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Sal laughed, “but your enthusiasm is contagious. My head tells me that we’re chasing a pipe dream, but my heart always tells me to be hopeful. Besides, Vicki
e and I told Blake and Lori that we’d keep tabs on their girls, and, as you know, Blake took them to be with your mother at the ranch while they’re gone.”

“Seriously? I had no idea. That will be good for Mom.”

“They think they are there to help with the horses; they have no idea that Blake and Lori aren’t still here in Fort Wayne.” Sal cautioned, “Don’t let them find out otherwise.”

“Aye, Aye, Captain,”
Christy saluted. “I guess this means that your answer is yes. When can we leave?”    

Sal thought
for a minute before answering, “Let me check with Vickie, and maybe Sarah—she’s helping Redders with his research too. I’ll talk to Carey and let him know we’ll be making the trip. Right now, I think we should be able to leave first thing in the morning.”

CHAPTER 8

When darkness finally fell over the area, Luke, Zach, and Maddy continued southeast. Zach and Maddy were experienced enough to set aside their earlier opposition to the move and were now focused intently on the mission. After gaining their cooperation, Luke had grown silent, appearing to be lost in thought after completing the radio call to the relay men. He didn’t tell his two partners that he’d since turned off his radio so they couldn’t receive any potential message from Jack ordering them to abort the operation. He didn’t want to have to argue with Jack about the need to go on, which was mostly based on his intuition that the true purpose of this mission was still somewhere ahead of them.

The young soldiers moved slowly through
the night, knowing that since they were only about ten miles from Elizabethtown, there was no need to rush their approach to the city. After an hour or so, they had covered a bit over a mile and were navigating their way through a small cluster of nice homes on the southern edge of Rineyville when Zach  hissed for them to stop. He was tilting his head and raising his NVGs to look at the sky, one hand raised as a signal for the others to remain still.

“You guys hear that?”
he finally whispered.

Luke and Maddy needed only a few seconds to detect the unmistakable sound of a helicopter
flying to the west of their position.

They both just nodded before they realized that Zach couldn’
t see them in the dark. “Yes,” they whispered at the same time.

Nobody spoke for several minutes as they scanned the night sky and
tried to find the chopper that seemed to be coming closer. Luke finally broke the silence, “We need to get into one of these houses.”

“Yeah,” Maddy agreed, “I’m pretty sure I can hear a second helicopter south of us.”

Luke took point as they approached the back door of one of the large homes, looking through the small windows to see that the portal led into a small mud-room. “We need to clear the entire house; there could be infected in here from the early days.”

The door was locked, but Luke was able to use the butt-end o
f his dagger, wrapped in a thin glove, to quietly fracture one of the small panes of glass and reach the dead-bolt. Even as they entered the cluttered mud room, they could hear scuffling and weak moaning behind an interior door that they assumed led to the living area of the home. Zach had his war-hammer ready as he silently gestured for Luke to turn the knob. The door opened toward what they knew was at least one flesh-eater, and as Luke pushed it open hard and fast they heard the creature fall to the floor.

Zach rushed into a large kitchen to find an emaciated, infected female trying to climb to her feet even as she moaned and snapped her teeth hungrily in their direction. The burly, former linebacker took two quick steps toward the pathetic creature and swung his hammer in a short, violent arc that sent chunks of brain and skull spraying across the tile floor. He didn’t see the large male shuffling toward him from a hallway to the left, but Maddy, as usual, was covering Zach with deadly efficiency. She calmly moved between the starving creature and its intended target, then plunged nearly a foot of cold steel from her short sword through the monster’s nasal cavity.

Zach shakily whispered his thanks as they set off to clear the rest of the first floor prior to heading upstairs. The only thing they found before settling in was a pile of small human bones lying amid a huge brownish-colored stain in one of the bedrooms. The horror of what must have occurred in this house during the early days of the outbreak was clear to the experienced fighters, but after everything they’d witnessed and done over the past four months the scene didn’t faze them. The teens just quietly closed the door and moved on to the master bedroom, which occupied a large corner of the house with tall windows facing both south and west.

By the time they were all situated in positions offering the best views
, they could clearly see two helicopters approaching from the west. One of the choppers seemed to be heading directly at them, while the other was flying a parallel route about a mile to the south. Luke was the first to see the scrambling horde covering the ground behind the birds, quietly muttering, “You guys were right about this being a round-up.”

Maddy scooted over to one of the windows facing west, where she spe
nt several minutes observing the approaching mass of hunters. “Lord, almighty, is this the main army?”

Zach had joined his two partners
and was taking his turn at the scope. “I don’t think so. There’s thousands of infected out there, but not tens or hundreds of thousands.”

“How can you tell?” s
he wondered.

“Don’t you remember counting corp
ses after the Battle of Chain O’Lakes?”

Maddy sounded disgusted as she answered, “Maybe the worst day of my life.”

“Yeah, me too, but my point is that we all stopped counting at about six thousand and estimated that many more still lying about. So we know what ten thousand looks like, and we saw more than that at the Battle of the Castle.”

“Yeah, but
this group is advancing along a mile-wide front.”

Luke interrupted the two, “I don’t know why Barnes would be marching his main force parallel to the Ohio; that doesn’t make sense.”

“Well,” Maddy offered, “we’ll know more after we watch them pass.”

“Oh hell no!” Zach exclaimed. “We have to get out of here right now!”

Maddy just shook her head, “You’re the one who said we have stick together.” She tipped her head in Luke’s direction, “You think superman here is going to run?”

“We stay and observe,” Luke calmly declared without taking his eyes from the window.

Zach was incredulous, “Luke, I don’t care how good you are at killing these monsters, this is insane.”

“We aren’t goi
ng to fight,” Luke explained, “and I don’t expect an army of hunters to be conducting house to house searches as they follow those helicopters.”

Maddy placed her hand on Zach’s forearm. “C’mon, you know he’s right; they move fast when those choppers are leading them.”

Zach’s voice was heavy with resignation, if not resentment, when he complained, “If they find us, we’re dead.”

“So we make sure they don’t find us,” she said. “They can’t see jack-squat at night, so if we’re quiet they’ll shuffle right on by.”

Luke looked at both of them through his NVGs. “We good?”

Zach nodded. “I’m all right
” he muttered as he glanced furtively at Maddy.

Suddenly, Luke completely understood Zach’s concern. The young
Hoosier’s girlfriend had recently broken up with him, in part, she said,  because he and Maddy were rarely far from one another. Gracie had speculated that the two could be in love, even if they both still argued that they were just best friends. Whatever the status of their relationship, Zach wasn’t worried about himself at all as the horde of infected approached their hideout; he was terrified at the thought of losing Maddy.

Luke knew that he’d feel the same way if Gracie was with him now, but he also was certain that he’d make the same decision to stay and observe. “We’re doing the right thing, Zach. All of us risk our lives nearly every day in this new world. I have a pretty strong feeling that we’ll be all right up here.”

Hearing Luke say that he had one of his ‘feelings’ about the situation, and that it was positive, calmed Zach a great deal. Everyone in the settlement whispered that Luke was some sort of mystic when it came to knowing where the infected were, and what they were going to do.

Zach finally nodded, “All right, Luke. I got your back, man. Let’s count these bastards.”

The horde of infected shuffled past the scouts’ observation post for more than two hours. The three teens agreed that there were probably somewhere between five and ten thousand of the creatures, and a decent number of them appeared to be damaged in one way or another. Some were missing limbs, others had fused joints, and many showed massive scarring from what had probably been burn-wounds. In short, this army didn’t match the descriptions of Barnes’ force that they’d been hearing from their prisoners.

Maddy stepped away from the window and wandered around the room, examining the contents of what had once been a young couple’s master bedroom. A wedding photo was on the dresser, next to some sort of trophy
. She picked up the picture and studied it. “Do you ever wonder about the lives of the people who lived in places like this—what they did, what was important to them, what they dreamed of . . .?”

“Nope,” Zach replied, “no point to it.”

Maddy sighed, “What about you, Luke? I mean, this was somebody’s home. A family had a life here, and I bet it was pretty nice. They look really happy in this picture.”

Luke glanced at the photo. “
To be honest, I try not to think about it.”

Maggie shrugged and set the picture back on the dresser. “What was your family like? What kind of house did you live in?”

Luke considered her questions before responding. “I guess we were a pretty normal family, at least before my mom got cancer. My dad, Jerry, he adopted me when I was really little. I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t around.” He stopped talking and leaned against the window, gazing out into the distance.

“I’m sorry,” Maddy said quietly. “It’s a stupid thing to ask about. I didn’t mean to remind you about everything you’ve lost.”

“What about you?” Luke turned to Maddy. “Doesn’t thinking about life before the infection make you crazy sad about all you’ve lost?”

Maddy laughed bitterly, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I do miss the w
ay things were when I was younger, but there’s nothing to miss about the past few years.”

Zach
was incredulous, “How can you say that? I mean, we didn’t know each other real well back then, but I saw you around. I saw you kick butt on the softball team.”

“Well, you didn’t see my dad’s meth lab in the barn. And you didn’t see him when he’d fly into a rage. He’d break stuff, beat up on my mom, and make all kinds of threats. Mom wouldn’t do anything because she just wanted to keep up appearances, but let’s face it, if you’re living in a run-down trailer with a meth lab out back, you’re not fooling anybody.”

Zach looked stricken. “I had no idea. I thought your dad took you hunting and taught you how to shoot, and after the outbreak he led the infected away so your family could escape.”

“That’s what I tell everybody, and it’s partially true.
He took me hunting when I was little, but he mainly taught me to shoot after some guys he owed money to broke in our house and held us hostage for an afternoon. After the outbreak, when our car was attacked, my dad did lead the creatures away, but only because he got scared and took off. He was leaving us behind.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Zach offered
gently, “but whatever you’ve been through, we’ve got your back.”

Maddy took a deep breath and smiled warmly at her companions. “I know you do, and I’m not sure why I told you all my personal business, but I guess that just means we’re all BFFs now.”

Luke raised an eyebrow, “BF what?”

Maddy laughed. “You are such a
weirdo. BFF – best friends forever. And as such, you both are henceforth responsible for keeping my mind focused firmly in the present.”