Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (31 page)

Two days later Jack, Carter, and David were waiting at the newly established railhead to get their first look at the Utah milit
ary leader they’d often spoken with but never seen until this moment. They knew that Stephen Carlson was a former SEAL officer who’d been teaching classes at Utah State when the outbreak began, but the short, slim, balding man who stepped from the train to meet his Indiana allies looked more like a former accountant than one of America’s elite warriors. Then they looked into the veteran’s eyes, and they felt the strength in his grip when they shook hands. Carlson seemed capable of looking into the soul of every person he met with his piercing gaze, which was framed by a face that was permanently tanned and marred by a long, angry scar running along most of his left jawline. The self-described wayward Mormon noticed Luke standing nearby. The teen was gawking at the pink furrow ending in a mass of red tissue where the bottom half of an ear once existed.

“Zigged when I should have zagged in Iraq, kid,” Carlson smiled as he ran a finger over the length of the scar. “I’m also disfigured by 7.62 holes through my left shoulder and right thigh, courtesy of a sniper during the Gulf War. Other than that, and debilitating PTSD, I’m as good now as I ever was.”

He then winked at Jack, “Didn’t you tell the youngsters that Frankenstein was on the way?”

Jack shrugged, “You didn’t sound like a shot-up mental case over the radio; now that we’ve actually met I should probably send out a warning to everyone else.”

The two leaders laughed and Carlson slapped Jack on the back good-naturedly as they walked along the rails to the fourth boxcar to meet the officer in charge of the engineer battalion. Jack and the other officers in Vicksburg had been scouting the area to help generate ideas for different types of defense works, and they were anxious to begin collaborating with Carlson’s men. The lieutenant colonel commanding the engineers introduced his staff and company commanders. They were all chomping at the bit to get a look at the ground they were to prepare for battle. With two hours of sunlight remaining in the day, Jack decided to quickly drive the officers around Vicksburg even before they had a chance to stow their gear. From the enthusiasm shown by the men, he knew that he’d made a popular decision, one that would allow the Utah engineers to immediately begin forming plans for obstructing the horde of infected headed their way. 

The f
irst stop was the relatively short causeway leading to the main bridge on the eastern side of the Mississippi. The riverbank here was high and rocky compared to the western shore, so the builders of the I-20 Bridge had been able to begin construction of their span very close to the muddy water. From this point the soldiers could view the immediate ground leading from the river to the main part of Vicksburg, the area that would be their last, and most important, line of defense.

After a few moments of observation
, one of the Utah lieutenants remarked, “Looks like we better find a bunch of bulldozers.”

“We can find ‘em,” Captain Harden growled. “Our folks used a
dozen of ‘em working on the walls.”

The battalion commander commented, “After reading General Smith’s manual on fighting the infected, plus the in-depth reviews of the big battles that have been circulating through army channels, I suggest we find a way to anchor both of our flanks on the river.”

Nobody responded until Jack finally realized that he was now General Smith. He didn’t like the title one bit, but given Carlson’s official command structure for the troops from Utah, he knew he needed to roll with it. “Excellent idea, Colonel, can your men clear a wide enough kill zone in an arc fronting the bridge?”

“Absolutely, sir, if we can get a hold of some bulldozers and diesel fuel. We can probably limit the arc to somewhere between six and eight hundred meters in total length; with the troops we’ll have available we should be able to man that size of perimeter in depth.”

“Sounds good,” Jack agreed. “I also want to try to block the heavy woods on both sides of I-20 where it bridges over that railroad cut . . . well, you can’t see it from here, but it’s less than a mile out.”

Carlson jumped into the conversation, “We literally have tons of concertina wire stored in depots near Ogden. We’ll start hauling it in with the troops immediately.”

Jack nodded in satisfaction, “All right, we have a good start then. Now we need to get your troops bivouacked, and I need a conference with you in my headquarters: I have an idea I want to bounce off of you.”

Following a hearty meal of roast beef, catfish, and once again, several types of corn-based dishes, Jack and Carlson retreated to a small conference room in the meeting hall with Carter, David, and Harden. A huge map of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi sat on a wall in front of
several rows of folding chairs. Jack waved everyone to sit down as Carter stepped up to the map with a pointer. The ex-Ranger was many things, and had lived in many places, but at his core he was a southern boy, and his knowledge of the region was the reason he was leading this meeting.

As soon as everyone was seated
, Carter pointed to an area just south of the Ohio River. “This is where the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers pour into the Ohio. The big green area just south of the confluence is ‘The Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.’ It’s more’n ten miles long, and the only bridges are north and south of it. Chad Greenburg’s instructions were to travel to this region once he forced Barnes southeast along the Green River. Now eventually Barnes is gonna get over the Green and head west again, and Chad’s force will be wreckin’ bridges all along the Tennessee River to keep the general’s army movin’ in a mainly southwesterly direction.”

Carter traced the route on the map with hi
s pointer and explained, “As ya can see, once Barnes is travellin’ along the Tennessee, he’ll be on a route pointin’ toward us. That wouldn’t be such a problem if we could keep him on the east bank, but Chad ain’t gonna be able to stop ‘em at the Pickwick Dam. There’s a road over that dam, and we’d be hard-pressed to destroy it with pre-outbreak explosives, let alone with what we got now. Once Barnes is over the Tennessee at Pickwick, he can follow Highway 45 through Corinth and turn west at Tupelo. From there he can take 278 through Oxford and link up with I-55. At that point, there’s nothin’ to stop him from movin’ down the corridor ‘tween the Big Black and Yazoo Rivers, which will bring him right to the front door of Vicksburg.”

Carlson raised a hand. “Is there any way we can seriously contest the crossing at the Pickwick Dam?”

Carter released a long, pent-up sigh, having been brought to the point of the meeting without having to introduce the nearly suicidal mission himself. “We just don’t know right now, sir. We don’t have radio contact with Greenburg’s team since they’re constantly on the move, so we can only speculate about Barnes’ location and speed of march. Our best guess is that the hunter-army is more than a week away from the crossin’ at Pickwick, even if they know ‘bout it and are making a push fer it. That’s if Barnes is still wanderin’ from bridge to bridge, hopin’ to find one intact.”

“And Barnes doesn’t even know we’ve chosen Vicksburg as the place to make our stand?” Carlson shrewdly inquired.

“Not that we know of, sir. We got good reason to believe that Barnes is thinkin’ that Jack is leadin’ a small band of fighters out in front of the horde, and that Barnes is willin’ to continue the chase till he corners his prey.”

Carlson rubbed his hands together with a hungry look on his face, his eyes gleaming in the lamplight like a cougar ready to pounce. He stood up and stepped next to Carter, where he turned to face the rest of the leaders gathered in the room. “Carter, please excuse my interruption, but I must suggest in the strongest terms that we send a sizeable force to the Pickwick Dam.”

Jack leaned forward in his seat, “Stephen, if we do that the great majority of fighters will have to come from the Utah divisions. Are you absolutely certain you want them sent out on what could easily become a suicide mission?”

Carlson cocked his head as if he was puzzled before answering. “General Smith, we have learned that standing behind defensive works waiting for Barnes to attack has become a suicide mission. We need to weaken him before he gets here to have any chance of destroying the fighting capability of this trained army of his.”

Jack nodded, smiling on the inside as the mission he never would have asked for was practically being demanded by the man with the soldiers to do it. “I agree completely. What do you have in mind?”

Three days later the 1
st
Infantry Battalion of the 1
st
Regiment of the 1
st
Utah Division, all five hundred fighters and their equipment, were loaded into a convoy of modified SUVs hastily gathered and serviced from all over the Vicksburg area. A team of locals had been sent out by watercraft two days earlier to travel up the Yazoo River and attempt to make radio contact with Chad Greenburg’s outfit so they had some idea what was heading their way. The mission was under the command of “Colonel” Carter Wilson, who’d asked Luke and T.C. to serve as his staff.

The plan was a good one, as long as they had enough time to implement it. The 1
st
Infantry was armed, armored, and trained in phalanx fighting. None of the soldiers had any combat experience using the formation, but Carter and Luke planned to lead from the front and keep an eye on how the Utah fighters handled their first encounter with the infected. The unit was full of veterans from the fighting that had raged throughout their state during the early days of the outbreak, as well as the push-back campaign that had been going on ever since the infection had been contained. These troops wouldn’t run or lose their nerve when they saw an army of hunters bearing down on them, but they might have some trouble maintaining the ranks and executing line rotations. That was the main concern Carter and Luke had about the upcoming confrontation, and they were confident that they could guide the westerners through the maneuvers in the face of the enemy.

The path over the dam was narrow, and
, of course, offered the best flank protection for a shield-wall. Fielding a phalanx sixty or seventy lines deep across the road was the goal in the looming battle, but if the full weight of Barnes’ army was pushing behind the front ranks, it would be impossible for any five hundred men on earth to stop the hunters. Carter needed to figure out a way to break up the momentum of the enemy attack, and had what Luke and the others considered a fairly good plan for doing so. If they had enough time after reaching the dam, the soldiers were to construct propane-tank bombs in the backs of pick-up trucks and park them bumper to bumper along the first half of the road. Once that was accomplished, the next step in organizing the defense was to find as many semi-trucks as possible and park them, haphazardly, across the ground leading to the dam so the hunters would be forced to climb over, under, and around the big rigs. Finally, ten snipers would be placed in boats and anchored in the lake just behind the dam with AR-15s. Each sharp-shooter would have one hundred, pre-loaded, thirty-round magazines to fire at the monsters.

Luke was riding in a pick-up with Carter and T.C., and
as they bounced along a series of Mississippi back roads, he couldn’t keep himself from thinking about what they were heading out to do. He knew, being the only veteran of the bridge debacle in Brandenburg, that none of these proposed measures would stop Barnes’ army from reaching the Utah phalanx. But he did hope that the fighters on the dam wouldn’t have to face the full weight of the entire hunter-army pushing the assault forward with irresistible force. If Carter’s plans did manage to create gaps in the horde, the tip of the spear where the confrontation was taking place might actually be a fight instead of an avalanche of dead and living infected. But Luke had seen Barnes’ army filling the horizon as far as the eye could see. He’d seen tens of thousands of prime hunters turn on a dime and head toward what appeared to them to be nothing but a wall, no prospect of a meal driving their attack. More than anything, he’d seen an enemy beyond counting.

Finally, he felt compelled to share his
concerns with Carter. “Carter, can I talk to you about this mission?”

“Of course, kid, what’s eatin’ ya?”

“Math is bothering me.”

“Always bothered me, too,” Carter quipped. “Main reason I joined the Army instead of goin’ to college.”

“Well,” Luke advised, “try to follow me here. If the truck-bombs kill a thousand hunters, which I really doubt—the creatures are tough. If, every round from the snipers kills a flesh-eater, something that wouldn’t happen in the best of circumstances, let alone bobbing in a boat. And if, the 1
st
Utah somehow found the strength to fight and kill from dawn to dusk, there would still be more than a hundred thousand hunters coming at them in the dark. This mission might delay Barnes by twelve hours, and with luck, might deplete his force by anywhere from ten to thirty percent, but is it worth the loss of an entire infantry battalion?”

“Carlson thinks so
,” Carter quietly replied. “I mean, we’re done runnin’ now. Jack plans to destroy Barnes’ army in Vicksburg or die tryin’, ya do realize that, don’t ya?”

Luke hesitated as he thought about what Carter
had just said. “So even if it boils down to a battle of attrition, we’re gonna fight Barnes to the end this time.”