Rotters: Bravo Company (6 page)

The LT’s voice came dimly through the radio.

“Shit, we’re fucked now,” Sadler cursed.

He shouted into the radio, trying to explain our situation to the lieutenant over the chaos around him; everyone was talking at once.

“Everyone shut up!” I yelled.

“The LT says we can fire at our discretion, they’ve been attacked too!” Sadler shouted.

“That’s mighty white of him, but did you tell him that shooting them doesn’t seem to be doing much good?” I asked.

“Yeah, I did. The CO seems to think that they are either on drugs or really sick or some such shit. He suggested head shots,” Sadler laughed. 

“Typical,” I responded.

“Here they come!” Hard-on warned.

The villagers staggered up the path into a hail of lead. The platoon opened up with everything we had. I saw several of them take shots center mass that would drop a linebacker. They staggered back a pace or two, and just kept coming. Quite a few of the villagers went down, their legs blown out, but they continued to crawl forward. One of them lost both arms but just kept staggering forward until Gunner turned the SAW on him. The big gun blew the man into bloody lumps. His head jumped off his shattered torso and rolled away.

I tried to concentrate on headshots. My second target took three solid shots to the head, stopping each time before coming forward again. My fourth shot decapitated the target, and he fell over into the mud. Before my unbelieving eyes, the headless corpse staggered back upright and stumbled slowly forward again, its fingers groping blindly.

A headless attacker was too much for Gunner. He stopped firing and dropped the SAW into the mud, then fell to his knees and began praying. He crossed himself repeatedly, chanting the first lines of the Lord’s Prayer over and over again.

Luckily, we ran out of targets before our ammo gave out completely, but it was close. The last mobile attacker staggered towards us, dragging one shot-up, broken leg behind it. Concentrated fire from the men still fighting shredded it into bloody chunks. The other SAW raked the downed corpses until only twitching, immobile body parts remained on the blood-covered track.

“Fuck me!” Sadler gasped. “I don’t believe what I just saw.”

Hard-on stomped over to Gunner and shook him. “Snap out of it, asshole!” he screamed.

Gunner opened his eyes and looked around at us in shock; tears ran down his face.

“How much ammo do we have left?” I asked.

Everyone did a quick round count. We were down to about twenty-five rounds per man and a pair of two-hundred round belts for the SAWs. Two of Sadler’s squad were completely out. We had shot through almost all of our ammo in a single firefight with an unarmed foe.

“I think we’re in trouble,” I muttered. “Sadler, you had better get the LT back on the horn and let him know how low on ammunition we are. We can’t stop another attack.”

Sadler contacted Command again. There was no argument this time.

“The old man wants everybody back at the HQ, pronto!”

We gladly retreated back through the village.

REPORT FROM COLONEL WARREN MEDICAL CO BRAVO

COLONEL ORTEGA
’S ANALYSIS OF VIRUS CONFIRMED. ABULATORY CADAVER SYNDROME CONFIRMED UNDER LABORATORY CONDITIONS. VIDEO TO FOLLOW.

THIS VIRUS IS EXTREMELY CONTAGIOUS.

SUGGEST IMMEDIATE QUARANTINE OF AREA AND IMPLEMENTAION OF ATTACHED SAFETY PROTOCOLS ASAP!

REPEAT ACS CONFIRMED.

MORE DETAILS AS RESEARCH PROCEEDS.

TRANSMISSION ENDS

COLONEL WARREN USARMY MEDICAL CORP

1:52 p.m. Zulu

Emergency Medical HQ

Village of
Lat, the Congo

We returned to the far side of the village. The attack seemed to have
ended; we encountered no more of the villagers as we retreated.

A sharp firefight had gone down on this side of the village too, as about a dozen of the sick villagers had emerged from the rain forest and attacked 2nd Platoon. We approached the killing ground. Hundreds of empty shell casings lay shining in the mud. 

  Two corpsmen from the medical unit were pushing still twitching body parts into a hastily dug fire pit nearby.

We stopped to stare. A medic came forward and inspected our suits. He asked if any of us had been bitten.

Some of the men were busy digging foxholes and stringing wire. It looked like we were staying for a while.

We could still hear the agitated moans from the samples tent. I shuddered.

I didn’t see the major anywhere. It was a safe bet that he had disappeared when the shooting had started. He led from the rear.

“Let’s find the
Sarge,” I suggested.

We found McAllister near the fire pit.

“
Sarge, what are we doing here?” I asked.

“We are holding this area while Col. Warren figures out what happened,” he replied.

“Maj. Dorset thinks that these people were just sick,” I pointed to the smoldering bones and embers in the blackened pit. “The mother
fuckers we fought were already dead, Sarge. These cock suckers are zombies!”

Sadler gave a short harsh laugh. “Zombies
ain’t real.”

The sergeant didn’t reply.

“They aren’t zombies, are they Sgt. McAllister?” Sadler asked.

“I don’t know what they are,” the sergeant
answered. “All kinds of weird shit goes on in Africa. I’m not sure if our rules apply here.”

“I’m telling you,
Sarge, the people out there, the things we fought, they aren’t alive anymore!” I emphasized. “But the major thinks they are. He’s going to get us all killed!”

“I know the situation is fucked,” the sergeant replied sadly. “But the major is in charge, what he says goes. The only good thing I can tell you is that we won’t be here long. Special Forces are coming in to take over. They’ll be here in two days to relieve us.”

“Fuck,” I muttered. “What if there are more of those things out there?”

“Then we do what we’re paid to do,” McAllister answered. “I don’t like this any better than you do, Parsons. The only one here who can countermand the major’s orders is Col. Warren, and he’s still too busy looking over the shit the missing unit left behind to talk to me yet. We’ll just have to wait.”

“Can we at least be proactive?” I asked.

“Yea,” the
Sarge replied. “These fuckers ain’t taken me down without a fight.”

1st Platoon spent the rest of the day setting up a secure perimeter around the HQ. The major had ordered it. It was a dick move and he knew it. Physical labor in chem gear is brutal. He wanted foxholes and wire done before dark.

The work was real slow going in our biohazard gear. You could only dig for a few minutes at a time, then you had to stop and rest. As the sun moved across the sky, the heat became super intense. You could sip water through a gas mask, but you couldn’t eat. It didn’t take long before I felt sick again. I was starving and
nauseous at the same time. My uniform was soaked with sweat, and I was constantly thirsty, no matter how much water I drank.

We had to watch out for each other constantly. The guy next to you would just pass out and fall over. As the day progressed, we lost half the platoon to heat stroke. The medical corpsmen had their hands full. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I staggered over into the shade of the trees and lay there panting like a dog. The next thing I knew, Sgt. McAllister was pulling off my mask. He dumped cool water over my head and handed me a canteen.

“Sip that, Parsons,” he ordered.

I noticed that he wasn’t wearing his
chem gear.

“What gives?” I asked, pointing feebly at his regular uniform. He was down to a tee-shirt and fatigue pants. “Where’s your
chem gear?”

“Col. Warren cleared us to operate without it,” he replied. “We were about to lose everyone to heat stroke and dehydration. The colonel says he can’t find any solid evidence that the virus is transmittable through the air. He thinks it’s only passed through the bloodstream. We lucked out.”

“Ah, shit,” I muttered. “What about Jonesy?”

“It doesn’t look good,” the sergeant replied. “He’s got a high fever. Warren told me he definitely has the virus. They’re monitoring him. If the colonel can figure this shit out, he might pull through. We don’t know yet.”

“Damn,” I answered.

“Come on,” McAllister suggested, helping me to my feet. “Let’s get some food in you.”

As the evening wore on, the platoon slowly recovered until everyone was back in the line. We had no further visitors from the forest, everything was quiet, the calm before the storm, I figured. I wasn’t looking forward to dark. Everyone was muttering quietly about what had happened. None of us had signed up to fight zombies.

We worked extra hard to improve our defensive positions. A rough box of foxholes now surrounded the tents and the motor pool, thirty yards out. Beyond that, we had strung up trip wires and flare wires, to warn us of any breaches in the line. Each side of the box had a SAW assigned to it; they were in the corners where they could provide overlapping fire to either side.

My squad drew the side of the box facing the village. I hunkered down into my foxhole and waited. I could still hear those poor bastards in the sample tent. The sound was just about enough to make you really edgy. I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore it.

I had rigged up my poncho over the hole for shade. The temperature was pretty decent without my chem gear, it felt like a balmy eighty-five or so. Everyone had been issued extra ammunition. I had a full five-hundred rounds in my hole, twenty magazines with twenty-five rounds each of 556. Thousands of rounds of extra ammo was parked just behind me near the truck. 

We were down
Jonesy in our squad, and 2nd Platoon had a man bitten and a man MIA. No one knew what had happened to him. I figured he was still running.

Col. Warren was going through the missing medical unit’s computer files and medical charts. We weren’t going anywhere until he figured something out. I knew in my gut that the entire medical unit had been infected and wandered off into the forest. It would have been way better if they had simply died, and we had found their bodies. I was pretty sure they were still out there, and that they would be back.

The LT came through on our side to check things out.

“Listen up, you guys,” he began. “The major says that no one is to shoot any Army personnel who return to the lines, under any circumstances. If they appear sick they are to be captured and brought to the HQ to be turned over to the colonel. You can fire if attacked by the locals, however, and should avoid any physical contact with them, as they may be contagious.”

“Anything else we should know, LT?” Hard-on queried.

“That’s it,” Reid replied. “Carry on.” He walked back to the HQ tent.

“Sweet Susie, what a cluster-fuck,” Hard-on groaned out loud. “We can shoot the locals, but don’t touch
em. Don’t shoot any of our people who have turned into zombies, and be sure to grab them!”

Hard-on had a real way with words. He was right, though. The major’s order was the typical counterintuitive bullshit they were always throwing at us.

We had been assigned one of the guys from Sgt. Price’s platoon; a short, red
headed Irish fuck named Fitzgerald. We called him Fitzy, of course. He was okay, but I was pretty sure he had never seen any real combat. Gordo had been put into the line on our side, too; we were pretty thin on the ground. They were on my right.

They had both seen the aftermath of the attack on 2nd Platoon, everyone knew the score.

“Hey, Parsons,” Gordo yelled from his fox
hole. “Which end of this thing do I point at the bad guys?”

“That’s real funny,” I replied. I pulled myself up out of my hole and wandered over to Gordo’s position.

“Give me your rifle,” I said. Gordo shrugged and handed me his M-4. Fitzy walked over to see what we were doing.

I ejected the magazine, and slowly thumbed the rounds out until it was empty.

“Only load twenty-five rounds into your mags,” I instructed them. “The full thirty will cause the gun to jam sometimes. Don’t ask me why.”

I reloaded twenty-five rounds into the magazine, and reinserted it into the receiver. I smacked it home.

“Just look through the reticle, put the red dot on your target, and then pull the trigger,” I said as I turned on the gun’s scope and mimicked shooting it. “Even you assholes won’t be able to miss.”

I handed the rifle back to Gordo. “Clean that gun like your life depends on it, because it does. If you get it muddy and don’t clean it, it will jam. Do the things I just told you and you might come out
okay. You too, Fitzy.”

  With a grunt, I got up and walked back to my position in the line. I dropped into my hole.

I wasn’t real copasetic with the way things were shaping up. With Jonesy out of commission it was really just me and Hard-on on this side of the line. After the way Gunner had froze up, I wasn’t too sure about him. He was on my left in the corner hole. If we lost the SAW again during an attack we’d all be fucked. I didn’t know the guy assigned to our other corner on the right. He was with 2nd Platoon, and attached to their side of the box. Theoretically, he would be okay.

“Gunner, you doing alright over there?” I inquired.

“Yeah, man,” he replied.

He had been very quiet after the attack. I figured he was ashamed of the way he had frozen up. I didn’t blame
him; we had all just seen some pretty fucked up shit. You never knew how you would react to combat until you were in it. Throw in zombies and all bets were off.

I had a bad feeling we were in for a shit storm. The sun was getting really low on the horizon, and shadows were spreading through the trees. 

Just before dark, Sgt. McAllister walked over and squatted down beside my hole. He had his sawed-off 12 gauge pump shotgun with him. He only carried it around when he thought the shit was about to hit the fan. Seeing that gun made me nervous.

“What’s up, Sarge?” I inquired.

“How do you feel about taking a little walk with me?” he asked quietly.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe through the village, maybe just a little ways into the forest on the other side. I want to see what’s going on out there. I don’t like waiting for the enemy to bring it to me.”

“Sure,” I decided. I clambered up out of my foxhole and stretched my legs. “Beats sitting around here with these numb nuts anyway.”

“Hard-on, Parsons and I are going to do a quick scout,” the sergeant said. “We’ll come back this way, and I’ll hail you before we come in. None of you assholes shoot at us. You got it?” he asked loudly.

“I got ya,” Hard-on replied. “Nobody fires without my order.”

I followed the Sarge away from our line and into the village. He went on point and I backed him up, slightly to his right. We advanced to the chapel. The sergeant moved ahead to look at the carnage there. He walked up to the edge of the small battleground and carefully looked around. Some of the bigger, more intact body parts were still twitching in the blood-splattered, muddy track. I could tell he was recreating the combat in his mind, looking for answers there. 

I don’t think he found any.

“What a cluster fuck,” he muttered.

Finally, we moved through the huts around them. The sergeant slowed as we walked through the village. We encountered nothing, everything was eerily silent. McAllister held up his hand and stopped.

“Do you hear that?” he finally asked.

“I don’t hear anything,” I answered quietly.

“Exactly,” he replied. “No animals, no insects, nothing. Come on.”

He led me across the clearing surrounding the village and into the rain forest beyond. We ghosted forwards, under the dark canopy of the giant trees. The sergeant led me down a faint dirt track. I was pretty sure I could find my way back, but being in the forest made me uneasy. We glided noiselessly forward across the loam.

Suddenly the sergeant stopped. He froze in place, and I did the same. It had become very, very dark under the trees. I couldn’t see anything, but I could faintly hear movement around me. A twig snapped loudly in the darkness.

The smell washed over me like a malodorous fog of death and decay. I gagged for breath. I knew this stench; it was the smell of carrion.

I very carefully pulled my NVGs down into position over my eyes and flipped them on. Suddenly the forest was visible, bathed in the goggle’s green illuminating glow.