Journal of the Undead (Book 1): Littleville Uprising (35 page)

“You can say that again! It doesn’t get much better than
Monday Night Football
and a cold beer. Maybe some pizza or a bucket of hot wings.”

“Would you guys shut up? I’m starving and you idiots are yapping about pizza and wings.”

“Forget that! I’ll tell ya where I would be. The Bungalow. My cousin Vic manages this club called The Bungalow. They have
the hottest
chicks there. He took me there for my twenty-first birthday, and man those babes were unbelievable! And they love a man in uniform.”

“Ah,
patriotic
strippers,” said Major Frank Stone as he entered.

Immediately, the soldiers leapt to their feet and saluted.

“As you were,” ordered the major.

“Nice! See, the major knows. The Bungalow is the hottest strip club in the country!” the young sergeant proclaimed. “Back me up, Sir. They’ve got the hottest chicks ever. Right?”

“Can’t say from experience. I’ve never been there but I’ve heard of it,” Frank was anxious to get to his point, rather than discuss strippers. If it hadn’t been for a C.O. with a highly overactive libido, he would have had no knowledge of a place like The Bungalow. “Is the enemy in sight yet?”

“Yes, sir,” said Private Nelson. “They’re still about fifteen hundred yards away. Now that I’ve seen them move, I’m sorry I woke you earlier, sir.”

Frank told him to forget about it and reminded him to sound the alarm when the enemy reached five hundred yards. Continuing on rounds, he wondered about Nelson’s age; the kid had such a baby face, and the things the young soldiers missed most held no value to Frank. Football and strippers were nothing compared to his family, which was what Major Stone missed most. Chuckling to himself, Frank had to admit a good pizza would certainly be welcome. The MREs were filling but couldn’t compare to Kate’s cooking.

After securing the perimeter, checking and then double-checking, they waited. The gates had been reinforced, supplies distributed, and still they waited. Time seemed to stand still and the endless waiting wore on men who had been primed and ready. When the alarm finally sounded, they felt a strange mix of relief and fear. ‘Take the clean shot’ had become their mantra as they easily targeted the heads of the slow shuffling creatures. One by one, bodies fell to the ground as bits of skull and brain fragments flew through the air. As the twice dead corpses fell lifeless to the ground, those still ambulating toppled over the mounds of rotting flesh. Each reeking body was like a brick in the slowly building wall of decaying remains. Frank was plotting a strategy for clearing the path when he saw two of his soldiers lugging a barrel out to the obstruction.

“Get back to your post!” he growled fiercely into the radio.

Deliberately ignoring the order, the two men, in their quest for glory, planned to burn the wall of zombies and take the whole wave out with it. They imagined themselves heroes as they hauled a barrel of fuel across the compound, through the gate, and out to the pile of dead carcasses. The air was so rank with the stench of rotted flesh they couldn’t smell the fuel leaking from the drum. They doused the corpses heavily then, like a scene from an action flick, one of the soldiers whipped a shiny Zippo lighter from his pocket. He clicked the igniter and produced a long flickering flame.

With an exaggerated bravado, he tossed the lighter to the ground and stepped back to admire his work. Instantly, a sea of flames engulfed the fuel-soaked mound of bodies and spread everywhere. Little streams of fuel carried the blaze back toward the soldier holding the empty barrel, where a puddle of fuel had formed at his feet, and ignited into a blistering inferno. Shrieking, the soldier could not put out the fire. His buddy tried to beat the flames with his jacket but fuel had soaked into the fabric causing each lash to spread tongues of fire everywhere. Thick, black smoke billowed from the sea of flames, charring everything in its path.

Abandoning his companion, the guilt-ridden civilian crawled through the dirt gasping for air, but instead of fresh, clean air, his lungs filled with scorching smoke. His burned and blistered skin split open as he slithered over rocks and gravel. Over every excruciating inch that he crawled, he grieved his lost friend. Crying out to a God he didn’t know and had never cared about, he remembered his grandmother saying “there are no atheists in foxholes.” The charred man prayed for death but believed he deserved no such mercy. Less than twenty yards from the gate, he lost consciousness. Medics charged after the fallen man and carried him to safety behind the heavily guarded walls.

When he regained consciousness, medics were tending to his burns in the compound.

“Stop,” the soldier groaned.

Knowing their patient’s coherent state may not last, the medics plied him for information.

“Who was with you?”

“Carson,” he breathed. “He didn’t … I couldn’t ….”

Again the volunteer slipped into oblivion, leaving the medics to continue their work. Lieutenant Brock stormed through the compound to the medics.

“Major Stone wants an update. Is he gonna make it? How many others were with him? Did any of them survive?”

“Only one went with him. Carson, but he didn’t make it,” one of the medics replied. “We can’t even retrieve the body. It’s a friggin’ inferno out there.”

“Damn foolish waste!” Brock growled bitterly. “Let me know when he’s awake.”

“Sir,” gasped the wounded man. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think ….”

“Damn right you didn’t think,” interrupted the lieutenant. Brock turned on his heels and stomped out. Less than an hour later, the young soldier succumbed to his wounds.

***

The fire blazed hot and bright all through the night and into the following day. Occasionally, a flaming zombie would wander through a gap in the mounds of charred remains. Not until a bullet lodged into its brain would the emblazoned body drop, motionless, to the ground and smolder. That evening a cold, frosty rain fell steady and strong. By morning, the fire had been quenched and a thick layer of frost glistened in the sunlight. Rows of zombies as far as the eye could see ambled toward the compound, moaning as one. Major Frank Stone set down his binoculars and sighed.

“I’d hoped the fire would have done more to decimate those stinking corpses,” Frank muttered. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”

As his sniper plugged away at their enemy, Major Stone was implementing his two-part plan to clear the pile-ups and hopefully destroy more ghouls in the process.

During recon flights, Lieutenant Brock had spotted a county garage that housed a small fleet of snowplows. They had secured the plows and would use them to clear a path when the bodies piled up. From the wall, snipers picked off the flood of invaders while the backhoe they had also liberated dug trenches. Using the plows, they pushed the mounds of decaying remains into the pits where they were able to control and contain a fire that turned the bodies to ash. Like a well-oiled machine, the soldiers plugged away at their tasks. They rotated shifts to sleep, eat, and battle their relentless enemy.

While pleased with the progress, Major Stone knew if he’d had the foresight to put his plan into effect sooner, two of his soldiers would still be alive.
I’ve been behind a desk too long
, Frank thought to himself.

He began to wish he had paid closer attention to Doc’s stories. Always assuming that Doc just enjoyed spinning wild yarns, Frank had never once considered that the zombie stories were true. It was hard to believe the vivid tales were not just figments of Doc’s imagination. He prayed that his son had more sense than his old man and that Evan had learned from Doc’s many chronicles rather than dismiss them as he had.

The slow tedium of picking off zombies had given Frank plenty of time to reflect and far too much time to miss his family. Yet he would have to wait even longer. Once the first league of zombies was finally destroyed and the last of their remains turned into ash, the next larger wave would be shuffling toward the compound.

In the meantime, he did everything possible to keep morale up and help his men stay focused on their objective. The promise of being dismissed to go back to their families more than fueled their desire to completely obliterate the enemy.

After several days of waiting, there was still no sign of the second horde. Reluctantly, Frank sent Lieutenant Brock up in the chopper for a look. With little reserved fuel, the lieutenant was ordered to make it quick.

“Major Stone,” Brock’s voice crackled over the radio. “The zombies moved off course, sir. They are no longer headed toward the compound. But if I fly in low enough I can draw them back on track.”

The plan was risky but safer than sending a team on the ground. Major Stone gave the okay to proceed. When the helicopter finally touched down inside the compound, the creatures were back on track. The majority of his troops were ordered to get some rest while a few remained on watch. After a thorough check of the perimeter, Frank climbed up into the tower to join the three on watch. Private Nelson, Sergeant Dawes, and Corporal Harris sprang to their feet as their commanding officer joined them in the snug room atop the tower.

“At ease, men,” Frank said as he lifted a pair of binoculars. “Any sign yet?”

“No sir, not yet.”

Frank drew a chair to the window and settled in.

“Sir, we can handle the watch. We’ll come wake you when they’re at five hundred yards.” Private Nelson said confidently.

“Are you trying to send the old man for a nap, Private?” Frank asked with a laugh. “I should be sending you kids to bed! How old are you anyway?”

Nelson stammered an apology but his commanding officer chuckled and told him to relax.
Frank believed that a good commanding officer not only knew his men but also served alongside them. After a few good-natured jabs about the major’s ‘advanced age,’ retaliated with cracks about the ‘infants’ he was babysitting, the men passed the rest of watch engaged in honest dialogue.

Frank learned that Corporal Harris was planning to propose to his girlfriend; Sergeant Dawes was raising two young boys with the help of his parents after losing his wife in an auto accident; and Private Nelson’s nineteenth birthday was just a few days away. Frank knew Nelson was young, but being only two years older than Evan made the major feel older than the men had joked about.

Hours passed before even a glimpse of the enemy could be spotted with their high-powered binoculars.

“I think I see something!” Private Nelson exclaimed excitedly.

At the faintest break of dawn, the first decaying head bobbed into sight. Still a long distance off, it would be a while before they could sound the alarm. Minutes clicked by slowly as they waited for the inevitable. When the alarm finally rang out the entire squadron charged into action, taking only clear, calculated shots. The first bodies fell in a heap. The cleanup crew was ready and waiting; the plows had been fueled and deeper trenches had been dug and lined with a highly flammable mixture of oil and gasoline. Every precaution had been taken and every action carefully planned, except for one fatal error. Two of the ammunition crates had been compromised and the boxes of ammo had been replaced with boxes of paperclips. Whether it was in transit or something some of the deserters had done, they would never know. The frantic supply clerk bolted across the compound in search of Major Stone. Even if the crates had been full of ammunition, there was still a chance that they’d run out before the last zombie fell, but now it was a certainty.

“Our ammo crates were filled with paperclips?” Frank repeated as if he may have misunderstood. “So we have
no
ammo in reserves.”

One of his men muttered, “We’re screwed,” and Frank was tempted to agree. Hand to hand combat was out of the question. With thousands of ravenous undead against his small band of soldiers and civilian volunteers, there was no doubt the outcome would be disastrous. There had to be another way. Frank’s mind raced to find another plan while the men grumbled sarcastically about their fate.

“Yeah, why should we need ammo when we have paperclips?”

“Too bad they didn’t send us rubber bands too, we could have made slingshots.”

“Let’s link all those little paperclips together into one long chain. Maybe
that
will hold them back!”

Lieutenant Brock tried unsuccessfully to quiet the men.

“Chains. That
could
work,” Frank muttered. His men looked at him like he had lost his mind.

“Uhh, paperclip chains, sir?”

“Not with paperclips!” Frank spat angrily, “Forget the damn paperclips already!”

Frank’s plan was questionable at best but no one else had any better ideas. Thick industrial chains were linked between the snowplows like a net. The idea was to catch and drag the zombies. It was like catching fish in a net; only they would drag the corpses to the trenches. Once caught in the trap, they would be dropped into the fiery pits to incinerate.

“Let’s not wait until we’re completely out of ammo to give this a shot,” Frank said bluntly. “We’ll need time to come up with another plan if this doesn’t work. Let’s go!”

Frank started toward the gate when Lieutenant Brock grabbed his arm.

“Sir, forgive me if I’m out of line but you can’t be thinking of going out there yourself!” Brock whispered.