Winter Apocalypse: Zombie Crusade V (29 page)

“I saw that, too.”

“Those crampons the islanders designed will definitely come in handy out there on the ice,” Jack observed. “Those little spikes under our feet will give us a huge advantage if we have to fight.”

“That’ll only work for a while,” Carter replied. “After we kill enough of ‘em they’ll be able to use their own dead for steady footin’.”

Jack lowered his optics and looked at his closest buddy. “We can’t get in a big fight out there on the ice, Carter. Half of our people are basically useless in combat, so we’d need to defend a perimeter around all of them.”

“I know, we can’t get pinned down out there on the ice. How far is it to the Detroit River?”

“Looks to be about forty miles.”

“We can cover that in an hour,” Carter said optimistically.

“We’ll take it easy, buddy; I don’t want our folks getting frost bite because we subjected them to a forty-miles-per-hour wind.”

“Yeah, well, don’t go forgettin’ that frost-bite ain’t nearly as deadly as hunter-bite.”

Carter’s belief that the Detroit River could be reached in an hour might have been true if one person was pushing himself hard. Maybe even a group of experienced trekkers could have made it if their machines held up. The problem was that the refugees’ machines didn’t hold up. The column had only covered three or four miles in two hours. Snowmobiles and ATVs were dying away from the relative protection of garages and other structures on Middle Bass Island. The arctic cold was still in place over the Great Lakes, but the windless conditions of the previous week had given way to a light westerly breeze. The wind had hardly been noticed on the island, but out on the ice the wind-chill effect lowered the temperature to forty-five below.

David was standing next to Jack during the latest of the many stops, some of which resulted in a functioning machine, while most led to more people doubling up on the vehicles still running, or adding their weight to the sleds that were already overloaded.

“You know,” Jack mused, “I can remember reading about German tanks and trucks, even guns, freezing up during their first winter out in the middle of Russia. For some reason, I always thought that the effects of the weather were exaggerated.”

David shrugged. “Maybe they were, but there was probably a lot of truth to those reports as well. I know that we put additives in all of our fuel lines and charged batteries to the maximum. None of us thought about wheel-bearings and hydraulic fluids freezing up.”

“Well,” Jack decided, “let’s hope we can keep enough vehicles running to pull the sleds. The rest of us can walk if we need to. We shake this horde at the Ambassador Bridge, and we can lay up in Sarnia for half a day while we see what we can do for our machines before we head out on Lake Huron.”

“Did Deb get through to Manitoulin?”

Jack shook his head. “Unfortunately, we haven’t heard from them, and I’d really like to know if we’ll be seen as welcomed guests or a foreign liability.”

By nightfall the column was thirty miles from Middle Bass Island, and landmasses could be seen with the naked eye in every direction but south. Fortunately, the large army of flesh-eaters hadn’t closed the gap on their prey; if anything, they’d fallen further behind. But the monsters wouldn’t stop for the night, and with their apparent tolerance of the weather conditions, their means of transportation wasn’t subject to failure.

Jack ordered a full stop after sunset. He had scouts out all along the route to the river, and they’d reported nothing but solid, smooth ice all the way to Detroit. Still, Jack wasn’t prepared to risk having any of his people hit a weak spot and fall into the water. Nothing would save anyone who got soaked in weather like this; no rescuers would be able to get them warmed up quickly enough. As soon as the vehicles were pulled into a laager and tents were set up, Jack organized a guard rotation for the night. When everything was finally in place at the campsite, he decided that he was fed up with running in slow-motion all day and solicited volunteers for a small raid against the approaching enemy.

David, Carter, and all of the former military members of their group wanted in, and Chien was bringing along twenty of his top soldiers. Hector was taking part in the sortie as well, his war dogs obviously excited as the men prepared for the mission. Altogether, Jack was leading forty of the deadliest warriors planet earth had produced in centuries against an army of thousands, and he smiled when he imagined the carnage his troops were about to create.

One item the islanders and Chien’s group had been wise enough to scavenge in huge numbers was ice-skates, so Jack decided to take a page from Dutch history and use the weather to their advantage. The Dutch had sometimes used skates in their long war for independence from the Spaniards, moving quickly along their system of canals and rivers to hit the enemy’s weak spots before anyone even knew they were there. That was the plan tonight.

The stars were shining as few had ever seen them, with all of the world’s cities and towns extinguished and a type of clear sky that only brutal cold could produce. There was no moon, but the soldiers found that the ambient light from the stars was more than enough for their NVGs to illuminate the icy night. Regardless, Hector continued to assure Jack that his war dogs would detect the hunters long before any night-optics could see the monsters. The canines had some sort of booties strapped on to protect their paws from the ice, as well as leather sweaters Trudy had helped design to keep the dogs warm and offer a bit of armor to their already daunting abilities.

Making their handler proud, Digger and Kyra alerted to the presence of infected two minutes before the horde could be seen with night vision. The hunters appeared to be moving a bit slower in the dark than they had been during the day, but the creatures were still shuffling along the refugees’ trail. The fighters separated into four squads, approaching the enemy horde on a narrow front until they were two hundred meters away from the vanguard of the pursuing army. At that point they stopped to remove their skates and attach crampons to the bottoms of their boots. Then, the killing began.

Through the NVGs the soldiers could see that in spite of the slow gait they were using, the hunters were relatively sure-footed on the slippery surface. The noise of thousands of flesh-eaters, packed closely together, snarling and gliding their ultra-calloused feet along the ice, easily drowned out any noise Jack’s troops made as they maneuvered toward the monsters. All of the fighters were armed with the silenced .22s that had been a staple of the soldiers’ arsenals since the outbreak began. The first sign of trouble for the hunters was when they began to stumble over the bodies of their fallen pack-mates, who were dropping in scores as the accurate fire poured into their ranks.

Following the months of running from Barnes’ invasion forces that had culminated in the Battle of Vicksburg, then suffering through a frenzied evacuation from both Fort Wayne and Middle Bass, Jack and his troops gleefully shot down the monsters with merciless determination. This was payback for the non-stop harassment the humans had endured for so long. The only thing that would have felt better was if the soldiers could have enjoyed the opportunity to shoot down the helicopters controlling the hapless infected. Since that wasn’t going to happen tonight, the troops focused on the slaughter at hand.

As with every fight against scores of infected being driven mindlessly forward from the air, the combat on the ice inevitably led to the humans being forced to steadily retreat. Hundreds of flesh-eaters were down, and the stumbling mass of hunters was slowed by all of the corpses in their path, but the thousands of monsters pushing from behind ensured an unstoppable advance. The soldiers all carried back-up pistols and dozens of loaded magazines, but problems eventually led nearly everyone to turn to their medieval weapons long before they’d hoped. Actions jammed, ammo ran out, barrels overheated . . . the list of reasons why the pistols had to eventually be discarded was long and varied, but all led to the same result.

Fortunately, Jack’s handpicked troops were well-trained and carefully briefed on what was expected of them during this point in the mission. Hector turned the dogs loose to run back and forth across the front of the horde, ripping at the tendons and hamstrings of the infected with a viciousness no human enemy could have ever elicited. The soldiers covered one another in echelon as they retreated, using spears and halberds to keep the hunters managing to avoid the canines at bay. As soon as the soldiers felt they’d adequately distanced themselves from the monsters, they dropped to the ice and put their skates back on. Then they spent the next three hours zipping along the flanks of the marching horde, spearing and slashing hundreds more of the creatures while the dogs continued to harry the front until Jack’s signal to break off contact and head back to the rallying point.

Without a single injury to any of the soldiers, Jack’s guerrilla unit had killed over a thousand hunters in their nighttime attack. Still, in the distance they could see that the horde was continuing to move forward in spite of the losses. Now, however, the troops were glad to see that the enemy hadn’t stopped their advance, because while the soldiers were killing and slightly redirecting the beasts, Bobby Crane and several assistants had prepared a welcoming gift for Barnes’ beasts.

The explosives expert had set charges in the ice across a front of three hundred meters. Bobby knew that his bombs would kill and maim a large number of infected, but what he hadn’t counted on was the effect of the combination of the weight of hundreds of hunters and ice weakened by the explosions. As Jack and the others watched from half a mile away, he set off the charges in the middle of the horde. Everyone had relied upon their unaided eyes to view the fireworks, but as soon as the bombs went off they put their NVGs back on to get a better look at the carnage.

The powerful blasts had sent pieces of flesh-eaters flying from the explosion-points, but as usual, nothing stopped the march of the horde. When enough bodies stood upon the fractured ice, a massive hole opened in the surface and swallowed up hundreds of hunters. Still more were forced into the freezing water by the weight of the creatures pushing from behind until, finally, one of the ubiquitous Blackhawks flew over the scene and changed whatever orders were being sent out to the infected. The army of monsters was momentarily halted.

Jack knew that the horde would soon be on the march again, as quickly as the humans directing them could determine a safe route for the advance. And the soldiers were cold, very cold. During the fighting they had sweated, heavily, and now their damp clothing was rapidly chilling whenever they stopped moving. There was no other option than to skate back to the refugee column as quickly as possible. The monsters hadn’t been destroyed, but they had been hurt and delayed. Jack estimated that the horde would be visible from camp by dawn, but far enough away that the people would have a decent head start as they continued the evacuation. If all went well, the refugees would pass the Ambassador Bridge, and Bobby’s next explosive trap, before dusk, and the flesh-eaters could enjoy another dip in the frigid waters they’d just sampled. Of course, all needed to go well . . .

CHAPTER 27

By the time there was enough light to see, but still before the sun broke over the flat, eastern horizon, the evacuation was set to resume. More vehicles had died overnight, but others had been resurrected by mechanics working while others slept, and overall, the refugees were two ATVs ahead of where they were when they’d stopped. The pursuing horde was only two miles to the south as the column of vehicles pulled away from their previous night’s campsite; the monsters had made better time than Jack had thought possible.

The fleeing humans experienced troubles from the outset; the mercury had fallen to thirty below by dawn, and a stout, northwesterly breeze was pushing the wind-chill lower still. By noon the column had covered just ten miles, a rate of progress that never once put the army of chasing flesh-eaters out of sight. The refugees had entered the mouth of the Detroit River at its widest point; land was visible in every direction except south. Carter and Deb were on an ATV next to Jack’s, and during the latest of what had been many stops, they all got together to share some jerky and complain about the slow progress.

Carter had seen enough of the ice. “We should head ashore on the Canadian side, get off this damn ice and get some protection from the wind.”

Jack appeared to think about the suggestion for a moment, but had no intention of trying to head across ground he wasn’t familiar with. “I hate the ice as much as you do, but I know enough about the ground between Erie and St. Clair to know we don’t want to try to cross it unless absolutely necessary.”

Carter look perturbed. “Why the hell not?”

“That’s farm country over there, flat as a pancake. Drainage ditches, creeks, rivers—we can’t go in there blind.”

“Well, how ‘bout the Michigan side?”

“Over four million people lived in the Detroit area before the outbreak,” Jack reminded his friend. “And again, there are a lot of rivers, canals, and other drainages feeding into the main river. That mean’s they’d all run directly across our route. We don’t know where all the bridges are, and there’s a million infected in southern Michigan.”

Carter sounded tired and cold. “The ice is killin’ us, Jack. We’ve barely covered forty miles and look how all our vehicles are dyin’. How we ever gonna travel three hundred miles to Manitoulin?”

Jack didn’t have a good answer for the question. His jaw twitched as he stared across the ice. “It’s all I’ve got right now, Carter.”

Deb put a hand on Jack’s arm. “Don’t worry about whiney-pants over here; just keep us moving to the north. We’ll worry about the future when it gets here.”

Looking back at the inexorable approach of the horde, Carter mumbled, “What future?”

An hour later, the convoy was halted a half-mile from Grosse Isle after the scouts reported the presence of a helicopter flying slowly over the southern part of the island. Jack quickly came up to the front of the column and carefully glassed the shore ahead. He saw the circling Blackhawk, and then realized that what he thought was brush below the chopper was actually a forest of infected. Jack didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the gathered flesh-eaters lying in wait, but he eventually turned to see that David, Carter, and a number of other leaders were at his side.

“We can’t get past them,” Jack almost whispered. “We’ll have to try crossing overland in either Canada or Michigan.”

Carter was the one to break the bad news to his oldest and truest friend. His voice was strangely subdued. “There’s Blackhawks and thousands of hunters on them shores too; we’re surrounded.”

Jack took a quick look to the east and west. He was silent for several long seconds, but finally said what was on everyone’s mind. “It’s over.”

David couldn’t believe their story ended here, on the ice of the Detroit River. “I’m not ready to concede yet; there has to be a way out of this. We should turn around and break through the force following us; at least some of us could get back out on the lake.”

Jack nodded, and he put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I want you, Christy, and the people you brought from Cleveland to try to escape that way.”

“Why just us?” David protested.

“Anyone who wants to try a breakout is free to go. In fact, Chien and his fighters might want to lead the charge. As for me, I’m done running. We can’t expect our old folks and our kids to fight their way through an army of infected, and I’m not going to let them die out here while I live.”

With that, Jack turned and walked away. Carter reached out and shook David’s hand. “Good luck out there; name that baby after me.” He bowed slightly to Christy before heading off to find his wife and catch up to his best friend.

As the others followed Carter, David grasped Christy’s shoulder while he looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m so sorry, baby, I am, but I don’t know what we should do. It’s suicide to stay, but it’s probably suicide to leave. Our baby needs us to do whatever it takes to survive. You need to survive for the both of us. I think you should find Sal and Vicki, and Blake and Lori, and see what they think. A small group of experienced fighters might be able to navigate a way to safety while the rest of us are keeping the hunters occupied. You guys could take your mom and all the kids and try to get back home—”

Christy softly kissed David to stop his monologue. “Nobody is leaving anybody; now let’s get back to the convoy.” She grabbed his hand and gave it a tug to follow Jack and the others.

David dug in his heels. “So this is how it all ends? Everything we struggled and fought for, all of it led to you and our baby being devoured out on this ice?”

Christy dropped David’s hand and pointed toward the hunters in the distance. “Those monsters out there don’t control our fate. General Barnes doesn’t control our destiny. So I’m pregnant, so what? Who do you think I’m carrying in here? The offspring of David Smith and Christy Carboni, two lawyers who learned the hard way that they were born warriors. Our baby is a warrior. Our destiny waits at the end of our final battle; we live together, and we die together—all three of us.”             

David looked as miserable as he felt; he had no more words to use. Christy pulled him close and whispered. “The hunters are strong now; they destroy before they eat. Just one quick moment of pain, after I’ve slaughtered those bastards until my arms can’t move anymore, and we’ll be safely away from here. We’ll be with Dad, and Luke, and Andi, and everyone else waiting on the other side.”

David could only hold her, knowing that she was right, but hating the thought of defeat. Christy read his mind. “My blood still lives on Manitoulin. Millions live in Utah . . . they all need inspiration, and they will avenge us. Now, I just have one question, my love. . .”

She stepped back and sadly smiled. “Can we go back to the convoy now?”

David wiped angrily at the tears on his cheeks and replied, “I’ll follow you and our little soldier all the way to the next world if that’s what fate has in store for us. Until then, we fight side-by-side—I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

The early-afternoon winter-sun bathed the entire area in a brilliant light that stood in stark contrast to the darkness creeping along the ice toward the humans awaiting the inevitable attack. Jack had quickly organized a make-shift laager using snowmobiles and ATVs as the base of a wall that was reinforced with thousands of pikes strapped to the vehicles so that their gleaming points presented a hedgehog of death to the approaching flesh-eaters. The humans also had the advantage of good footing on the ice; their crampons easily gripped the slick surface that so obviously hampered the movements of the hunters. Jack positioned most of the veterans in key locations directly behind the laager—Marcus, Bobby, Tina, Chien and his men—along with Hector and his war dogs.

The inescapable disadvantage was the numerical disparity between the two opposing forces. Jack figured that he had maybe one hundred true fighters, with a couple hundred more who might be able to hold their ground with a spear if paired with a veteran. In the middle of the tight circle stood over four hundred refugees too old, young, sick, or otherwise disabled to do much more than wave a pike in front of the hunters. Jack knew that many of these people would fight much harder for their lives than they’d ever dreamt was possible, but that effort would only come after the defensive line was overwhelmed, and the flesh-eaters reached the soft middle of the formation.

Jack estimated that at least twenty thousand infected were now shuffling toward the trapped humans from every direction, maybe twice that number. Many of the monsters were something less than the prime hunters faced during the Vicksburg campaign, but there were still thousands of the fully evolved beasts mingled among the others. All of them had teeth, and one bite was fatal. Even if the horde contained nothing but the zombies seen in the early days of the outbreak, the humans would run out of the strength needed to resist before all of the creatures were dead. The laager would help protect them for a time, but again, the mounds of corpses from the monsters killed would eventually allow the hunters to attack the defenders from high ground.

The fighters gathered together near the people they loved the most. Jack and Carter would stand shoulder to shoulder once again. The tough survivors of David’s Journey were checking over one another’s armor with an easy familiarity that demonstrated the love they held for each other. Even Sal was fully decked out in the fighting gear David and Christy’s dad, Jim, had helped design after first rescuing the young Martinez family. The giant, formerly pacifistic professor, smiled and joked with his friends, but his eyes were deadly serious as the monsters drew closer.

Brittany and Roberto were standing in the center of a line of islanders they’d mostly trained and equipped. When they had a moment of semi-quiet, Roberto had something to say. “I’m sorry about what happened, I mean, Red was an S.O.B., but I hate to see you hurt.”

Brittany smiled sadly. “I was an idiot. You were right about him all along.”

“Actually, I think I was just jealous. I didn’t have a clue that he was working for Barnes; I probably would have hated any guy you hooked up with,” Roberto confessed.

“For the record, I probably would have left him for you even if he wasn’t a traitor. I mean, if you would have had me.”

Roberto looked surprised, “Seriously? I never thought I had a chance.”

“Well, just so you know, I probably fell in love with you when we were taking turns telling Father O’Brien stories as he was dying. I felt obligated to Red, so I tried to ignore what I was feeling. You’re a great guy, Roberto, and I wish we could have had more time.”

“I love you, Brittany, and when we die today, I will die a happy man knowing that you love me too.”

Brittany snorted. “Doesn’t it bother you just a little that I killed my previous boyfriend?”

“Only because I didn’t get the chance to do it myself.” Roberto took off his helmet and lifted the visor on Brittany’s before pulling her close and kissing her passionately. “You kick ass, Brittany. I’m honored to stand with you here. I do have one last request, though.”

Brittany grinned. “No time for that, the bastards are almost here.”

“No, I’m serious.” Roberto lowered his eyes and replaced his head gear. “Will you find me, on the other side?”

Brittany’s breath caught in her throat, and she nodded before promising, “My parents, sister, and you; then we go find your family. Deal?”

“Deal,” Roberto agreed. “How many should we kill first?”

Brittany shrugged. “I’d like to kill ‘em all.”

The months of training and fighting across half a continent had fine-tuned the killing-ability of many of the soldiers standing between the infected and the vulnerable center of the defensive circle. The humans withheld their fire until the monsters were at can’t-miss range, which for most of the shooters was inside of ten meters. When the first of the flesh-eaters crossed that imaginary line, hell was unleashed on them. Surviving a zombie apocalypse meant that the people still alive knew how to prioritize when it came time to run, so ammo had been maxed out on the supply loads at the expense of everything else. Shotguns, pistols, rifles, and revolvers were locked and loaded, lying in hands that knew how to use such deadly implements with lethal precision. The creatures slid toward their prey with hunger and hatred, but what they found was fire and hot lead.

Jack knew that throughout history, nobody had fought harder or better than free people with profound incentives. Today, with their families and loved ones huddled behind their thin line, this band of humans fought with an intensity and ferociousness that surprised even the most battle-hardened among them. Hundreds of infected were dead in the first minute of fighting, but thousands waited to climb over their still-warm corpses. As gun barrels turned red-hot, and the ice grew slippery with an ever-expanding puddle of warm, steaming blood and gore, reinforcements for the horde continued to leave the sure-footed earth on the Michigan side of the river in large numbers. Overall, there were still thousands more hunters working their way across the frozen lake from the south in pursuit of the fleeing humans, but the northerly assault was building up steam faster than anyone had anticipated.