Transformation: Zombie Crusade VI (10 page)

“The same goes for me,” Luke whispered.

It had been many days since the hunter’s last meal, but even the sound of Food—of Humans—did not excite him. His most recent kills played over and over in his mind, but the memories were irritating rather than satisfying. His first target had been dispatched easily, and he’d sated his hunger before tracking the smaller Human who’d run squealing from the campsite. The hunter had kept a keen watch for the return of the larger one, the one who carried danger, but there had been no sign of him since he’d wandered away from the others. The lone hunter had no desire to pursue danger, so he’d decided to follow the trail of the small one.

The Human was easy to follow as it left a strong scent of urine in its tracks.
His tracks
. At first, the trail had led toward the river, but then it doubled back haphazardly. The hunter quickly located his target, tucked into the crook of a tree, chest height from the ground. The Human had made strange, high pitched noises and weakly tossed a few small rocks at his pursuer. The hunter had been momentarily distracted by the sound of a motor nearby, but it was a puny rumble, nothing like the machine-birds, so he’d ignored it as it faded into the distance.

He’d lunged forward and snatched the Human from the tree by his throat. At that second, the hunter’s mind had flashed back to his first kill of the night when a strange sensation had overwhelmed him, and, for an instant, there’d been a deafening buzz in his mind, and his body had been painfully paralyzed. Only for an instant, then he’d sunk his teeth into the soft flesh of his prey and thoroughly enjoyed his meal.

As the hunter dangled the smaller Human before him, he’d felt apprehensive, worried that the earlier incident was about to be repeated.  For several minutes, he’d just stared at his scrawny, jibbering prey, not feeling the compulsion to feed on this urine-soaked weakling. Finally, he’d roared in frustration and ripped off the Human’s head. He’d taken a few bites from the soft midsection, but this kill had not held his interest.

He’d made himself a nest close to the river and slept, but when he awoke he felt weak and dizzy. He slipped down to the water’s edge for a long drink; the only clear thoughts in his head were memories of his last two kills. With no hunger to drive him back to the hunt, he quietly stepped back to the nest and crawled into the leaves and moss. In the darkness, he struggled to slow his spinning thoughts. He struggled in vain, until finally, he slipped into a deep slumber for the rest of the night.

At breakfast, Gracie finally explained her idea for clearing the area of infected. “We go old school, the Jack Smith Castle method.”

Luke and Gracie had been stuck near Cleveland when the Battle of the Castle took place in northern Indiana shortly after the outbreak began, but everyone who knew anyone in the Hoosier settlement had heard the story of that bloody fight. Maddy and Zach had fought there, and they looked at Gracie as if she’d lost her mind. Maddy was the first to speak.

“First of all, we don’t have a giant fort to defend. Secondly, we don’t have fire-trucks, high explosives, or catapults. Thirdly, that plan had some serious flaws that almost got us all killed; plenty of people died as it was.”

“And again,” Zach added, “we don’t have a giant castle.”

Gracie just shrugged and impatiently waited for the objections to subside. “Our troops can create a fort in an hour that will stop thousands of hunters long enough to kill them.”

Maddy snorted. “You know we got pushed off our wall during the battle and had to hide in hardened buildings all night, right?”

              Gracie was undeterred. “We dig a ditch, plant stakes, and keep the river at our backs in case we need to retreat in a hurry.”

              Zach shook his head. “The hunters are miles to the south of here, and Luke said there’s no big water near the depot.”

              “Wow,” Gracie sighed with exasperation, “you guys are really slow on the uptake sometimes. The last time I had to sit through another telling of the story of the Battle of the Castle, I seem to recall that the infected were deliberately drawn to the location with sirens.” She looked at Maddy, “In fact, I believe you just mentioned how we don’t have fire trucks; I wonder, are fire trucks the only vehicles that can make loud noises?”

              Nobody spoke for several seconds, until Maddy broke the silence with a brutal observation. “We are idiots.”

              “Speak for yourself,” Zach suggested.

              “No,” Luke interrupted. “She’s right; we don’t have to fight on their terms, we can bring the creatures to us.”

              Gracie had been thinking about this for a while, and she had a basic plan to get everyone started. “Set the two infantry companies to digging and planting tomorrow morning, and I’ll lead my scouts out searching for police cars or something. Actually, any cars that can honk really loud should work just fine. Luke, I know you said the road would need a lot of work to be passible—do you think we can clear a path without attracting to much unwanted attention?”

Luke pictured the highway in his mind. “We’ll only need to open up a single lane, so I’m sure it’s manageable.”

“So what do you think of the plan overall?” Gracie asked.

Luke didn’t like Gracie’s role in such a dangerous operation, but he realized he was being hypocritical. She was more than competent, and he trusted her judgment completely. “It’s a damn good plan, babe. Maddy, you and Zach build us a castle; don’t forget about that razor wire in the johnboat, string it between the stakes as much as possible. Gracie, you’re in charge of finding a vehicle with a siren and getting it up and running; you have any mechanics in your unit?”

              “Yeah, I have several guys who claim they can fix anything; one of them is a certified diesel mechanic.”

              “That’s good,” Luke said, trying not to sound worried. “I’ll round up some muscle to clear the road; we’ll stick close by your scouting team so if you have any trouble we’ll be able to help out.”

              “Hey, look at this.” Zach had opened up his maps and was pointing a calloused finger at a particular spot. “This Highway 8 leads from the west side of the depot all the way to the Red River.”

Gracie frowned. “Haven’t we had enough of bridge-fighting?”

Maddy shrugged. “Hey, we’ve won a few and lost a few, but the tactic is sound.”

Gracie thought for a moment; she had to admit that this new idea had real promise. “How far is this bridge from the depot?”

“Looks to be about eight miles,” Maddy answered.

“Bridges are pragmatic choices all across America when it comes to defensive positions,” Gracie concurred. “But ultimately we’re trying to build an army that can fight anywhere, anytime, with the same effectiveness as we’ve experienced on the bridges; well, most of the time, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Zach added, “some of our worst defeats have come on those damn bridges too.”

“The problem,” Gracie explained, “is that we usually end up with an ‘irresistible force meets immovable object’ situation if the hunter numbers are high.”

“And people tend to get hurt at the point of contact,” Maddy completed the lesson they all knew well.

Zach suddenly remembered something Luke had been trying to teach him for weeks. “Fixed defenses can easily become traps; the best defense is mobility and ferocity.”

“Patton?” Gracie wondered.

“Seifert,” Zach smirked, “known to you as hubby.”

Luke took a playful bow, and Gracie groaned.

They all laughed together, enjoying a brief moment of levity as they discussed plans that could get them and their troops killed. Maddy finally wiped a tear from her eye and brought everyone back on topic. “We have enough fighters that we could form a phalanx ten deep if we use the bridge to guard our flanks, but these guys have never been in a scrum like that.”

Luke scowled. “We haven’t had them spend much time on line rotations or other phalanx movements yet. We’ve been focused on the basics, and the phalanx isn’t a basic operation. It takes practice to do it right.”

“So,” Maddy offered, “find a piece of high ground and use stakes again?”

“I don’t know,” Zach argued. “The only reason any of our bridge-defenses ever failed was because we weren’t prepared for the numbers that came at us in Kentucky. Unless you think there’s a hundred thousand hunters and a few Blackhawks around here, I’m still gonna consider bridges as good defensive positions.”

Luke was starting to feel restless. “You guys talk this through, consider all the pros and cons, and come up with a couple concrete plans that we can discuss this afternoon. I’m going to do a little recon that might help inform our final decision.”

“What are you gonna do?” Zach looked confused.

“He’s going to run off by himself and go looking for trouble,” Gracie explained with a sigh.

“Look, I know you’re super-dude and everything, but nobody should head out alone, without back-up. You must not have been a boy scout,” Zach scolded.

Luke grinned and slapped his friend on the back. “No offense, Zach, but I find it hard to believe that you were ever a boy scout. Anyway, I’ll be fine. If I tried to take someone with me, they’d just slow me down and distract me.”

Maddy looked at Gracie. “Do you think it’s a good idea for our fearless leader to go off on his own?”

Gracie knew that her friends had justifiable concerns, but she also knew that Luke was right—no one could begin to keep up with him anymore. “I don’t have to like it,” Gracie replied, “but we all know that Luke can do things we can’t. We just have to trust him.”

“But—” Maddy started to protest.

“Look, not only is he faster and stronger than anybody or anything out there, the hunters don’t even recognize him as food anymore,” Gracie reminded them. “If we’re talking about using Highway 8 as part of our plan, don’t you think somebody better have a look at it?”

Luke knew that Gracie couldn’t help but worry about him, and it made him appreciate her strong defense of him all the more. “I’m just going to have a better look around, that’s all. I promise I’ll be back in time for lunch.”

CHAPTER 9

After Luke struck out on his personal scouting mission, Gracie got back to the topic at hand with Zach and Maddy. “How far is that bridge from the depot again?”

“Looks to be about eight miles,” Maddy replied.

Zach nodded in agreement, then he smiled devilishly. “I’ve got another idea.”

“Which is?” Gracie tapped her foot with faux impatience.

“Okay, there’s a huge truck stop along I-30 just north of town. We take a few of your diesel mechanics over there and fire up a dozen semis and line them up along the railings of the bridge.”

Gracie was intrigued. “How wide is a semi?”

Maddy knew the answer. “Just a bit under nine feet—my dad drove a rig for years when I was little.”

Gracie started doing the math in her head, but Zach already had it figured out. “Line those trucks up bumper to trailer on each rail, and the width of that bridge is like, thirty feet.”

“We can park one across the bridge on the north bank too,” Maddy added.

Gracie slowly nodded as a smile creased her face. “That’d make one hell of a kill-zone, and we wouldn’t need a phalanx to stop their advance.”

“Damn right!” Zach excitedly agreed, “Be like a cattle-chute for the infected. We can put our best crossbow-men on the trailers and give each of them a couple of re-loaders. The rest of our troops can use pikes and spears; death from above!”

“What about the bodies piling up like they always do?” Gracie chewed her bottom lip as she considered previous battles where hunters had used mounds of the dead to reach human fighters.

Maddy had already figured out a solution for that recurring problem. “We can have rappel-lines down to waiting canoes for the people on top of the trailers, and the fighters at the blocking position can retreat to the river easy enough.”

“We might not need to worry about it,” Gracie reconsidered as she thought about the plan. “This is actually just a math problem. How long will our kill-chute be?”

Zach shrugged, “Four-hundred feet or so.”

“Okay,” Gracie looked at the nearby tree-line as she worked the numbers in her head. “So the square footage of the chute will be around fourteen thousand, and the average hunter would take up maybe twelve-square laid out dead. That means the bottom of the chute could theoretically hold something like fifteen hundred corpses, but since they won’t exactly fit like a puzzle, we’ll round down to a thousand. How high is a semi-trailer?”

“Higher than a basketball-hoop,” Zach offered.

“Definitely,” Maddy agreed. “I want to say it’s thirteen-six; that number’s in my head for some reason.”

“Fine,” Gracie accepted the estimate. “That’s an impossible jump for most hunters, but once they have a couple of corpses to use as a platform . . .”

“Plus the cabs, the cabs will be our weak point,” Maddy added.

Gracie shrugged. “It’s still a damn strong position.”

“So. . .” Zach wondered, “you like the bridge idea?”

Gracie nodded. “Sure beats the hell out of putting thousands of stakes in the frozen ground. I might as well work with your people until we have everything set up; no point in trying to lure the critters in until we’re ready.”

“You figured out how you’re gonna draw ‘em in?” Maddy asked.

The expression on Zach’s face showed that he thought the question was pointless as he looked up at Gracie. “I thought Luke already said we’re gonna use sirens in police cars.”

    “Well, that atlas of yours shows a Super-Walmart where Highway 8 leaves the depot. I think most police cars were left trashed after the fight to stop the infection failed, and I’m not going to try driving fire trucks on apocalyptic roads.”

Zach looked confused. “How else you gonna get ‘em to the bridge?”

“I played basketball for our high school team back in Ohio,” Gracie explained. “I don’t know how many times some idiot-fan brought in one of those miniature air-horns and blasted it off; those things are very, very loud.”

Zach nodded as he remembered the devices. “I forgot about those things; yeah, they’ll work just fine.”

“And,” Maddy offered, “you can use them on the back of a motorcycle if you want.”

“Pretty cold for a motorcycle,” Gracie protested.

“Not as cold as being dead,” Maddy quipped. “I was just thinking about the easiest way to get through all the blockages on the unfamiliar roads around here without having to move a lot of vehicles.”

“Hmmm,” Gracie shrugged. “I guess cold beats dead any day—we’ll look for bikes while collecting semis.”

As Luke quietly and cautiously headed south through the cold morning air, he thought about the previous evening in the tent with Gracie. He’d spent a good deal of time and energy trying to avoid a physical relationship with his wife, worried that he might infect her, but being careful and using protection had turned out to be much easier than he’d imagined. Now, he wouldn’t give up what he and Gracie had for anything in the world.  He felt a twinge of guilt as he crossed I-30 on the north side of Texarkana and headed towards the buildings where he knew people had signaled for help the previous day. He knew Gracie wouldn’t approve of him deliberately making contact with unfamiliar, and potentially unfriendly, survivors on his own.

He could sense the presence of infected as he openly walked across the highway, and the monsters were close. He did nothing to hide himself from anyone or anything, choosing to stop at the edge of the interstate where his silhouette could be easily noticed against the overcast sky. He stood with his arms crossed and eyes closed, relying on senses beyond vision to tell him what was going on around him. Soon he heard the scuffling sounds of feet on the pavement, and eventually, the rasping breaths of at least six different hunters carried on the gentle breeze blowing from the southwest. Luke could now smell the creatures, their odor rancid from the blood and gore they’d become covered in during a recent feeding. Finally, he knew they were watching him, so he opened his eyes to see the flesh-eaters standing just twenty meters away.

The pack was a bit ragged-looking, but the alpha was a fairly large male in relatively good condition. The monsters stared at Luke blankly, then most of them began to wander away. Only the leader exhibited any interest in him. When they made eye contact, the alpha boldly walked toward Luke, snarling low in his throat with a tone that indicated a guarded hostility. Nothing in the creature’s body language indicated an imminent attack, and Luke sensed that it was more curious than threatening. 

For his part, Luke was interested in seeing how the hunter would react to him. This alpha wasn’t as impressive as the one he’d stared- down at the river, but it maintained eye contact as it approached. He was ready to take the hunter down, if necessary, but he didn’t sense an immediate threat from the beast. Luke was wondering if he’d be able to communicate with the hunter when the question became irrelevant: the monster’s head exploded in a red-gray mist a second before the crack of a distant gunshot told him what had just occurred.

The truncated corpse slowly toppled to the ground, as Luke warily scanned the area in search of the rest of the pack while praying that the sniper was finished shooting. He wasn’t really worried about a handful of hunters, but the thought of high-velocity bullets bouncing off of skulls or other objects was definitely a cause for concern. Thankfully, the sight of their leader having his head blown off sent the surviving flesh-eaters running for cover; these creatures apparently understood the concept of gunfire. Luke decided to raise his hands above his head and mouth the words, “thank you,” in the direction he’d been heading toward. With the overcast sky, the survivors in the city couldn’t use mirrors to signal someone on the highway as they’d done the previous afternoon. Luke could have run away even faster than the hunters had, but he’d come here to meet the people living in Texarkana, so he stood his ground.

As the minutes passed with no sign of further hostility from the sniper, Luke carefully lowered his hands and poked himself in the chest with an exaggerated gesture. He held the pose for a few seconds, and then pointed toward the building where he thought the shooter was posted. He didn’t see or hear any response from the survivors, which didn’t surprise him in an environment where noise could quickly bring a hungry pack of hunters to your position. But he was here to gather information, and talking to the people living in the area was the easiest way to do that.

Stepping gingerly over the gory mess at his feet, Luke walked slowly but deliberately down the ramp from the highway into the city. He kept his eyes and ears open as he navigated the cluttered streets of Texarkana, shaking his head with sadness at the sight of countless skeletons and shattered bones lying about. Thousands of people had been eaten alive here, and Luke could feel a great weight of unspeakable terror crying out from the concrete beneath his feet. For a brief moment, the enmity he’d felt since the outbreak began tried to uncoil in his consciousness, but he quickly reminded himself of who was ultimately responsible for the dead scattered before him: General Barnes.

A solitary, crazy, but brilliant, doctor with a horrific agenda had set events into motion that led to almost seven billion dead. Every person who’d been killed, or turned into a monster, since the virus entered into the world’s population was unique, special, and had desperately wanted to survive. Six months later, the human race had been reduced to piles of bones, packs of bi-pedal flesh-eaters, and scattered bands of beleaguered survivors growing increasingly sick, hungry, and exhausted. Once again, Luke realized how determined he was to see Barnes pay for his crimes against humanity.

Not long after Andi finished showering, General Barnes sent an officer to escort her back to the airfield where they had landed just two hours earlier. The jet they’d arrived in was nowhere to be seen, but from the amount of attention the ground crew was paying to a new-looking Blackhawk on the tarmac, Andi surmised that the next stage in their California adventure would include transportation by helicopter. She sat in the Hummer for about ten minutes and engaged in some small talk with the young lieutenant serving as her driver and, she assumed, armed guard. The officer appeared to be about sixteen years old, but Andi hoped that he was older than that.

“How long have you been in the Army?” she asked with what she hoped was a disarming smile.

“Uh, just a few months, ma’am.”

“So you joined up after the collapse?”

“Yes ma’am, my father had pulled me from college a few days before things got really bad, and he’s kept me at his side ever since.”

“Your father must be a good soldier to have kept you both alive through everything that’s happened since last May.”

The lieutenant beamed with pride. “He is that, ma’am; he’s in charge of the entire northern California command, reports directly to President Barnes. I still had a year to go in my ROTC program, but with the manpower shortage after the outbreak, my father was able to obtain a commission for me from the president.”

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Major Bradley Pruitt, ma’am.”

“Ah, so may I call you Lieutenant Pruitt?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Andi continued to smile, genuinely pleased to have ended up with the opportunity to speak with such a well-connected officer. “So, was northern California hit as hard as the rest of the country?”

The young soldier’s expression quickly darkened. “Worse, I think, but I haven’t been through much of the country; we were sent out here last fall from Virginia.”

“Have you found many survivors out here?”

He shrugged. “We find isolated settlements scattered across the state, especially near water and up in the mountains. But too many of them have gone rebel.”

Andi expressed surprise. “Rebel? What do you mean by that?”

“They don’t want to come under the authority of the president and the military forces following his orders.”

She swallowed and kept her voice even. “What do you do with people like that out here in California?”

The officer shook his head, actually appearing to be genuinely saddened. “You don’t want to know, ma’am.”

Andi reached over and patted the lieutenant’s forearm as she tried to appear empathetic. “It’s okay, I’ve been with the president for a while now. I’ve seen the flesh-eaters turned loose on rebellious settlements back east.”

“I don’t know why we do that,” Pruitt quietly confessed.

“I don’t either, and to be honest, I’ve tried not to think about it. The world’s a crazy place these days; I suppose that desperate times call for desperate measures,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “Hey, the president’s pulling up.” He seemed worried now. “Please don’t tell him what we were talking about.”

Andi smiled a bit coldly, determined to play whatever cards fate placed in her hand. “Don’t give it a second thought . . .”

Barnes was already exiting from another Hummer as Andi left her response ambiguously reassuring. He waved for her to join him, and she was surprised to see Lieutenant Pruitt grab a duffel bag from the back seat of the vehicle and board the waiting Blackhawk. Apparently, the young man had been reassigned.