The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (25 page)

“Save ammo. Use your bayonets and end these
abominations!” Heinlich ordered in a venomous croak.

The woman and two of the men attached the
blades to their rifles and with a detached coldness, methodically
stabbed any infant creature they could find. Reese kept his knife
bayonet in his hand and coolly knelt down next to a cooing red-eyed
baby and slit its throat from ear to ear. They found eight of the
infected newborns scattered in the nesting area and ended them all.
When they were finished, Hernandez staggered to a corner and
vomited.

“Sergeant, this is Nantz, were running out of
time,” Heinlich heard the man’s voice crackle over his headset.

He keyed his mic. “Talk to me.”

“They’re pushing the bodies through. I don’t
know how long we will be able to hold them with our remaining
ammo.”

“Copy. Hold there for just a little longer,”
he ordered. “Carroll! On me! Reese, you’re with the Corporal! Let’s
spread out and find a way out of this place, pronto.”

Within minutes Heinlich and Carroll
discovered the building’s loading docks along the rear wall. The
crazies’ nests were thick on the floor before the corrugated steel
rolling doors and they had to traverse the area carefully to avoid
stepping in the mounds of human shit that contaminated the flooring
around the nests. They killed two more of the inhuman babies as
they cleared the area.

“How do we get them open without power?”
Carroll asked the Sergeant when they found the doors.

The Sergeant walked over and examined the
large steel curtains closely; they were an older style door that he
was unfamiliar with. “There’s got to be a way to open and close ‘em
when the power goes out,” he stated, mostly to himself. All the
loading doors he had used in the military had ways to manually open
them and he was sure the commercial ones would also.

He noticed a chain dangling from a sprocket
attached to what he assumed was the drive motor mechanism that
stuck out of the side of the hood cover at the top of the door. He
tried tugging one way on the chain, and when it didn’t move he
pulled down on the other length without success. Then he spotted
the two thin metal cables hanging down and tucked behind a power
conduit. A small plastic ball was attached to the bottom of each
wire and as his eyes traced the wires up into the shadow of the
motor he saw that they attached to either end of a lever-bar on the
side of the hood cover. He pulled on one of the wires and was
rewarded with the lever shifting down with an audible click.

“I think we got it,” he muttered to
Carroll.

Just then his radio headset came to life with
the voice of Corporal Hernandez. “Sergeant, this is Hernandez. We
found a steel entry door on the back side of the offices, although
it’s locked up tight.”

He reached up and pulled on the chain closest
to him and the sprocket at the top moved about an inch and stopped.
He grabbed the other chain and yanked down and the door began to
open as the top sprocket spun.

“Corporal, we found a way out. Get your asses
to the loading bay. Nantz, did you copy?”

He heard affirmative replies from both groups
and finished pulling open the segmented rolling steel curtain.
Carroll ducked out into the bright sunlight when the door was
halfway up, scanning with his rifle for any tangoes.

“We’re clear, Sergeant!” he called from
outside.

Heinlich stepped outside, his rifle at the
ready. The back loading area was quiet.

Hernandez and Reese were the first to find
them and were soon followed by Nantz and Benton.

“I can’t believe you pulled our asses out of
that frying pan, Sergeant.” Nantz laughed, taking in a deep breath
of the clean, crisp autumn air.

“We may be out of the pan, Nantz, but I think
our tootsies may still yet get burned by the fire,” he replied
sarcastically.

“Okay everyone, form up on me. We got a long
way to go to get home and it ain’t going to be fun wearing full
battle rattle. Now let’s move and for fuck’s sake, stay
frosty!”

They headed off in a single file column along
the back of the warehouse, heading south with Hernandez bringing up
the rear. The building stretched approximately three hundred meters
to Amherst Road and they hurriedly negotiated the length without
incident.

At the corner of the building the Sergeant
signaled a stop and indicated he would scout around the corner with
Carroll providing immediate cover. He glanced around, indicated an
all clear, and they moved away from the concealment of the building
and across the pavement toward the road that stretched east and
west about fifty meters ahead of them. As they fast-walked toward
the road, Heinlich was able to see across Statler Boulevard to the
parking lot in front of the Kroger. He smiled to himself when he
saw that the HEMTT was gone from the parking lot and was hopefully
on its way back to Gypsy Hill.

Between the commotion that they had made with
the Stryker, and the HEMTT leaving in the other direction, the
remaining horde had fractured into smaller groups, chasing off in
opposite directions from each other. After losing sight of their
intended prey, many of the crazies were now moving about aimlessly
like lost sheep.

As the squad left the concealment of the
warehouse lot and entered an open narrow grassy area that separated
the building from the two-lane road ahead of them, one of the small
groups of crazies meandering purposelessly on Statler caught sight
of the squad’s movement and an enraged cry went up, which was soon
echoed by more and more of the creatures.

“Move! Move! Move people!” Heinlich yelled
when he saw the small groups coalesce together as the alarm caught
on and the crazies sprinted toward them.

The squad hit the road running and turned
west along it. The road doglegged to the southwest before ending on
the east-west expanse of Lee Highway. By the time they reached the
crossing at Statler, the horde was reforming and moving to cut them
off. There was no way they were going to outrun it and with their
depleted ammo supplies outfighting it wasn’t an option. The best
they could do was to knock out the lead runners and maybe delay the
horde.

The Sergeant saw what appeared to be the
start of a neighborhood off to his left behind a retail area. Maybe
through the thickly treed yards and tightly packed houses they
could break up and slow down the swarm. He shot off in that
direction with his squad close on his heels. The sight of the
hundreds of crazies chasing them gave wings to their feet as they
dashed across a parking area and another road to reach the
tree-lined yards that separated the rows of homes. He put a halt to
their run when they reached the sparse copse of trees and signaled
the squad to assume a defensive position behind tree trunks.

“Okay 29th, let’s get some!” he yelled,
opening up on the lead elements of the enemy force. The front of
the horde collapsed under the barrage of firepower. Heinlich
ordered another ceasefire and they abandoned their positions before
the swarm regrouped. By this action they conducted a fighting
retreat; stopping wherever concealment presented itself to engage
the creatures, slowing their advance, before falling back to
another position. They zig-zagged their way through the
neighborhood splitting the force behind them as the crazies were
drawn around houses and trees, effectively scattering them into
smaller groups. Soon less than a hundred of the hostiles were still
on their tail. The squad continued on their general southwest track
and after half a klick they crossed a street well ahead of the
pursuing crazies and entered a thickly wooded patch of land between
housing developments. Heinlich signaled a stop and they all assumed
a knee behind the trees, breathing hard and covered in sweat.

Each squad member checked in on their
tactical radio communication set. Most were down to their last
magazine of ammo and Nantz was halfway through his final teabag of
SAW rounds. The Sergeant knew their situation was critical. It was
a turkey shoot, however, the goddamned things had the advantage of
numbers, and they just kept coming at you, all else be damned. He
watched as the remainder of the crazies advanced across the street
toward the patch of woods that the squad was concealed in.

“Fix bayonets!” he ordered for the first time
in his life.

The crazies were advancing at a slower pace
since they had lost sight of their quarry in the woods. They
approached at a walk, seemingly un-winded by their chase. The
growls and mutterings of the group of crazies carried clearly to
the squad’s ears.

Heinlich told Nantz to engage the tangoes
when they were ten meters from the wood line, everyone else was to
conserve their ammo and engage the remaining crazies with blades as
they entered the woods.

“On my mark, let’s start kicking some ass out
here,” he told them over their radios. He hoped this wasn’t going
to be a repeat of Custer’s last stand.

“Nantz, light ‘em up!”

The SAW loudly spurted blasts of hot jacketed
lead into the crazies, knocking them down in waves. It ended all
too soon when the gun ran dry.

Heinlich stood up from behind the tree. “Okay
grunts, let’s start hookin’ and a jabbin’!” He led the charge into
the diminished pack of crazies.

They formed a tight line as they met the
amped-up creatures who, upon seeing the squad emerge from the
trees, went ballistic in their rage, launching themselves forward
with a snarling, animalistic drive. The odds were easily eight to
one against the squad of six men and women.

Sergeant Heinlich was the first to engage
with the horde of crazies in the hand-to-hand fighting. A thin,
muscular man leaped at him from the curb and was airborne when the
Sergeant thrust his bayonet deep into the creature’s shoulder and
used its momentum to fling it past him into the trees. He brought
his bayoneted rifle back to the front in a smooth, fluid motion in
time to meet the next pair of crazies that were hurling themselves
at him. Beside him the middle-aged Debra Benton swung her rifle
upwards in a cutting motion, slicing open a nude female crazy from
groin to breast. The injured woman stumbled past, her legs getting
tangled in her own dangling intestines as they slipped from her
gaping belly, causing her to fall to the grass howling with
pain.

On both sides of him the battle raged and
blood flew. They swung and stabbed with their rifles, while Nantz
used his depleted squad automatic weapon as an effective club. The
bodies and gore piled up around them and their arms grew exhausted.
Finally, it was over when the last crazy fell with Reese’s large
Cold Steel fighting knife shoved up into the skull of the crazy
man’s jaw. He yanked his knife free and the creature fell backwards
with blood gushing from the wound.

They stood looking at each other and
breathing heavily with their shoulders sagging, arms and faces
splattered and dripping with the blood of their enemies. Benton
wiped the wet blood from her lips with the back of her hand,
leaving a grotesque red smear across her mouth and cheek. She spat
onto the ground trying to get the coppery taste out of her
mouth.

“Is everyone okay?” Heinlich asked, his
scraggly blond beard now red with dripping gore.

There were nods and a few ‘yeses’ while
everyone fought to catch their breath.

“We kicked some ass out here,” he grunted,
still breathing heavily. “Although we ain’t out of it yet, we gotta
move before more of ‘em find us.” He hastily scouted a direction to
take the squad with his eyes. “Let’s move out. Carroll, take point.
Watch our right flank. If any more are coming that’s the direction
I expect to see ‘em come from.”

“Ever forward! Hooah!” Carroll called out as
he assumed point.

They moved north, their bodies on the verge
of exhaustion.

The Humvee sat idling on the southeast side
of a set of railroad tracks that split Staunton diagonally in two.
Jeremy leaned out and took another potshot at the leading line of
Loonies that were a couple of hundred yards back, relentlessly
following the two through the crowded middle-class homes of yet
another neighborhood. They were now almost two klicks away from
where they had left the rest of the squad at the OMS Annex. The
Loonies were moving fast, sprinting at nearly 25 miles per hour
without any signs of tiring. Sarah had kept the vehicle about one
to two hundred meters ahead of the advancing swarm, pacing their
speed to keep the swarm a safe distance behind them.

“Well, sport, this is where I think we dust
them and double back,” Sarah said to him, smiling her dazzling
heart-melting smile at him.

“Okay.” He had such a crush on her that he
would have run into the swarm empty-handed if she had asked him
to.

Jeremy ducked back into the vehicle and Sarah
accelerated the Humvee up the incline to the track bed. They
bounced up and over the tracks and down the other side onto a
parallel road. Sarah gunned the engine and the Humvee shot off up
the street. She had been driving these city streets since she was
sixteen and knew them well. The street went through a series of
name changes and then it would dump them out onto Lee Highway. From
there it was a short run to the annex. They sped away, leaving the
swarm lost to sight far behind them.

They sped along through the car cluttered
streets as fast as they could safely drive, sometimes driving up on
the sidewalks and front yards to get around abandoned vehicles. The
neighborhoods of tightly packed homes were quiet and utterly devoid
of life. Over the radio they had listened to Pickeral constantly
trying to raise Gypsy Hill Mobile, however, her efforts proved
fruitless. From the radio traffic, it sounded as though Dogwood One
was on the move again and the HEMTT was making good time to the
armory with its load intact. When Shavers and McCully had driven
clear of the mobs of crazies, they had stopped and ‘cleared’ the
trailer of a few handfuls of the creatures that still clung to the
bed of the supply truck. The Stryker and its squad of men and women
seemed to have fallen off the edge of the world.