Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (21 page)

With the spell woven by the spectacle of an army of hunters being pushed to their deaths finally broken, squad leaders began to inspect their units and determine who was dead and injured. A quick tally of casualties revealed five dead and four wounded seriously enough that they would need to be evacuated back to Fort Wayne. All of the injured had broken ankles sustained during the harried descent from the fighting platforms atop th
e walls. Chad was grieving the loss of eight veterans over the past twelve hours, but Jack knew that the toll could have been much, much worse. As he rehashed the battle in his mind, he had a hard time figuring out how any of the defenders had survived the attack. The coordinated hunter assault had been unprecedented in both numbers and determination. Seeing perhaps ten thousand of the monsters plunge to their deaths was gratifying, but even Jack had a hard time convincing himself that the loss of so many experienced fighters was worth the thousands of casualties suffered by the enemy. Watching the horde move westward along the Kentucky side of the river, it seemed as if their numbers were undiminished.

Chad appeared at Jack’s side, a look in his eyes not seen since his people suffered the defeat in Buffalo.

“Well,” the gruff, former platoon sergeant sadly declared, “my boys got chopped to pieces in this one.”

Jack couldn’t meet his old comrade’s eyes as he muttered, “I’m sorry I put them in such an untenable position, Sarge.”

“Don’t let me hear that bullshit again, Jack. And for damn sure don’t let anyone else hear you saying things like that. You’re a commanding officer now, not just one of the guys. Officers lose soldiers in combat—you know that as well as I do. You had a good plan, and we all believed those walls would hold for a while. The enemy surprised us with a tactic we’d never seen before; now we’ll have to adjust. That’s the way war’s gone since the first caveman cracked another’s skull with a rock.”

“Every time somebody dies under my command
, I just want to lay down and give up,” Jack confessed. “I just can’t figure out how the great generals from history ordered so many soldiers to their deaths.”

“First of all, if you didn’t feel this way after losing people you wouldn’t be a good officer. And secondly, the great generals all realized that the sooner they confronted the enemy and destroyed them
, the quicker the war would end and the suffering would stop. Nothing’s changed in that regard.”

Jack let out a long, mournful sigh, “At least all the people back in Fort Wayne who can’t fight are safe.”

“Damn right, and every one of the guys we lost today fought for that goal.”

He peered at Jack from the corner of his eye before continuing, “Now square thos
e shoulders and harden your heart. These people need to see us in charge and confident. We can cry when we get home.”

“That’s what I said in Afghanistan, Sarge, but somehow I never made it all the way back.”

CHAPTER 13

Carter and David’s crew had travelled over three hundred miles since leaving the Brandenburg encampment, and they continued to push themselves at a punishing pace down the Ohio toward the confluence with the Mississippi. They had found a number of groups of survivors along the river, normally holed up on islands or peninsulas where they were doing their best to keep a low profile and somehow stock enough food for the coming winter. Most of the time Carter stopped and quickly told the people an extremely condensed version of who he was and what he’d been through since the outbreak. Every group they talked with had heard about Barnes’ rampage across Tennessee and Kentucky, usually from small bands of refugees floating downstream.

Some of the set-ups seemed safe for the time being, even from Barnes, and Carter told them as much. A community of three hundred survivors on Diamond Island had managed to harvest more acres of grain than they knew what to do with, and unless the hunters could be forced onto landing craft
, the people there would survive the winter and the hunter-army prowling through Kentucky. Another settlement had been cobbled together on a long peninsula across the river from Evansville, protected at its base by a series of streams and swampy ground that would probably protect them as long as they blew the necessary bridges if a horde passed nearby.

All of the survivors had lived through
nearly five months of a monstrous Darwinian struggle in which only the brave and audacious had made it to safety, and they didn’t like the idea of leaving the settlements they’d worked so hard to create for themselves. Nevertheless, Carter and David tried to explain Barnes’ plans for America and convince the hardy settlers that even communities that seemed safe for now would eventually be marginalized and starved out, even if the hunters couldn’t reach them over the water. The bottom line, they explained, was that all North American survivors would ultimately have to join together to stop Barnes, or they would eventually be subject to death or slavery.

The
people in the most secure of the communities they encountered wouldn’t leave their safe-havens, but as David led their motorized raft toward Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio joined the Mississippi, scores of all types of watercraft filled with refugees were following him.

“Jack didn’t t
ell us to organize some sorta exodus,” Carter quipped as he looked back at the motley flotilla travelling in their wake.

David was firm in his decision to lead survivors aw
ay from Barnes. “He didn’t tell us not to, either. There’s fighters in those boats, and eventually we’re gonna need every one of them.”

Carter didn’t look convinced, bu
t he just shrugged. “How far ya think we are from Cairo?”

“About eighty miles, we’ll be there this afternoon if all goes well.”

“Think we’ll find survivors there?”

“Probably,” David speculated, “
the map shows a lot of water in the area . . . plenty of places for people to hide from the hunters.”

“Hope so,” Carter murmured, “
and maybe they got news of what’s goin’ on down south.”

“I hope they have a radio powerful enough to reach Jack; but yeah, information about the lower Mississippi would be great.”

Carter leaned back and tried to make himself comfortable as he pulled a tarp-covered sleeping bag up to his chin and made a show of closing his eyes for a nap. “Wake me up when we get there.”

David and Carter had switched positions several times before reaching the Cairo area around three in the afternoon. The closer they got to the confluence of the two mighty rivers
, the more people they saw. Most of the groups were small, even family-sized. Many were living on barges anchored in the middle of the Ohio, with small boats of all types tied to ladders leading onto the huge vessels. Some folks called down to the raft as it passed, but the soldiers just waved as they continued downstream. After a half-hour of this, Carter cocked his head and listened carefully to his surroundings before asking David if he could hear gunshots to the north. It took a few minutes, but David finally answered in the affirmative.

Soon they could hear the din
of a big fight taking place somewhere close to the river, and even though the barges and buildings along the bank blocked their view, they knew the enemy by sound alone. Finally they came to a place where they could see people travelling along a road that ran just a few hundred meters from the shoreline. Trucks and other large vehicles were loaded down with men and women carrying firearms and pikes, and moments later what could only be described as a company of infantry marched by on their way to the sound of the guns.

“Whatcha think, Davy
?” Carter drawled.

“I think
nobody’s called me Davy since grade school. I also think there are a lot of people around here, and it looks like they’re fighting a battle somewhere nearby.”

“Prol
ly no better way to make a good first impression than pitchin’ in when a buncha infected are tryin’ to kill the people ya wanna talk to.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” David agreed just before shouting to Gabe and
Bobby, “Gear up! We’re heading into a fight.”

Before leaving their raft
, several of the boats following them had pulled up, the occupants asking what they could do to help. Carter was screwing the two pieces of his halberd together after attaching the rest of his weapons to his belt. “Y’all stay right here, on the damn water! Keep everyone else in their boats too. We’re gonna see if we can help these folks out with whatever’s got ‘em all riled up.”

“I thought we were comin’ to Cairo
just to talk to anyone we found here?” An old man in a crowded fishing boat wondered aloud.

Carter impatiently explained, “Nobody’s gonna be willin’ to talk if
they’re under attack. My men’ll find out what’s goin’ on and do what we can to help. I ‘spect they’ll be a lot more friendly if we help ‘em out before askin’ a buncha questions.”

He turned to the three soldiers to find that they were geared up and ready to
rumble. “Keep yer helmets off ‘til we meet these folks—don’t want ‘em shootin’ first and askin’ questions later when four funny-lookin’ strangers show up in the middle of a fight.”

With that warning they took off for the road at a fast walk, thankful for the
ir leather armor in the freezing temperatures. Carter flagged down the first vehicle to pass, an SUV with a City of Cairo logo on the door. An older man, with saggy jowls that indicated a good deal of recent weight loss, rolled down the passenger window and demanded, “Who’re you folks, and what do you want?”

David stepped forward to
handle this, recognizing a self-important bureaucrat when he saw one. “We’re former U.S. soldiers, sir. We’ve been leading a fleet full of refugees down the Ohio, trying to find a safe place to set them up for the winter somewhere along the Lower Mississippi.”

The harried man hesitated for a moment before stammering, “Well, all right, we’ll talk to y’all when we have a chance. Right now we’re trying to fight off a pretty big attack by the eaters.”

“Sir,” David politely explained, “these are Ranger-trained experts in killing the infected. If you’ll give us a lift to the front we’ll help you out.”

The driver quietly advised his passenger, “Sir, I
don’t think we should . . .”

The obviously important man
on the local scene raised his left hand for silence. “So, what’s your name, and where you from?”

“We’re from all over
, but most recently we’ve been based out of the Great Lakes,” David lied. “A lot of us have family and friends out here somewhere, at least we hope we do.” He nodded towards Carter, “My friend here is from Kentucky, but we’re on our way to the Mississippi.  Actually, right now we’re pretty busy trying to find shelter for the survivors we’ve come across; this weather is turning pretty deadly.”

“Yeah it is,” t
he man sighed. “Y’all are welcome to help us fight, but I’m not sure what we can do about your refugees.”

“We’ve got food to get them south for the winter, sir; what we really need is information
, and I can see that we won’t get much while your community’s being threatened. Mind if we pile into the back seat?”

“Go on ahead, but keep those spears of
yours sticking out the windows . . . I don’t need any more head wounds.”

The drive to the scene of the fighting took only a few minutes, but during that time David learned that the man in the passenger seat was the acting mayor of Cairo. His predecessor had gone missing early in the outbreak, and as a former county representative and Vietnam Marine veteran
, the town had asked him to take charge during the crisis. He wasn’t sure what was happening up ahead, but he did explain that the guards posted at the bridges outside of town had radioed a level-five alert before going silent. As the SUV pulled to within a hundred meters of the fighting, they could see why.

A land bridge spanning some sort of canal or creek had been breached by hundreds of hunters, the monsters barely being held at bay along a sandbag wall just south of the waterway. The scene was one of chaos and screaming, as fighters were quickly running out of ammo and
being pulled down by the flesh-eaters trying to scale the barricade. Carter and the rest of his team witnessed something they’d never before seen used as a weapon against the infected: war dogs. Several dozen large-breed dogs, mostly shepherds by the look of them, were wreaking havoc in the midst of the hunter assault. The well-trained canines were darting amongst the infected, biting and pulling at hands and arms as they apparently tried to herd the creatures back toward the water and away from their human handlers.