Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (39 page)

Luke stopped speaking for a moment and let his words sink in. “I’ve learned to fight well over the past five months, but if it wasn’t for peopl
e like my dad, the Smith brothers, and the soldiers of the 1
st
Utah, I would’ve been dead long ago. I just want you all to know that I am honored to fight at your side.”

As Luke went back to his seat, the scattered applause grew to a rhythmic
roar. Jack smiled to himself and wondered if mankind’s proclivity to monarchy would reassert itself in a post-infection world. If so, he figured he’d just witnessed a historic moment. Something about Luke Seifert radiated “the boy who would be king,” even though his name didn’t sound particularly royal. His spiritual nature, telegenic good looks, and overall reluctance to assume power combined to make him an ideal candidate for the job, should it present itself. For some reason, Jack found this fantasy to be tremendously satisfying.

CHAPTER 22

The next week passed quickly for the Vicksburg garrison, which was now being referred to as the Allied army, or simply the Allies. Arming, armoring, and training the new troops occupied David and the members of his old team who’d come to Vicksburg, including Luke and Gracie. The survivors of the 1
st
Utah Battalion drilled all units of the 1
st
and 2
nd
Divisions until the disciplined westerners could operate the phalanx in their sleep. The sloped additions to the main walls were now finished, hidden by a massive, wooden rampart that made it appear as if the walls had simply been thickened so the fighting platforms were deeper. The defenders hoped to keep the new design a secret, planning to wait until the hunter army was fully committed to the attack before small amounts of explosives would collapse the new ramparts and expose the slopes. Most of the various commanders proclaimed their faith in the belief that the wall-modifications wouldn’t be necessary, as the untold miles of wire and other traps continued to be increased. Those leaders who had never seen the horde just couldn’t believe that any force could overcome the defenses the Allies had prepared.

Marcus and Bobby led a small team of soldiers to the northeast, where they were to locate Barnes and harass his forces. As expected, the General had moved his army from Pickwick Dam into northern Mississippi, where they then travelled west until they reached I-55. Reports were called in every day from the guerillas, giving details on Barnes’ location as well as what actions had been taken against him. A furious, nighttime assault on the cowboys and the herd they led was conducted by the former Rangers and the fighters they commanded. Unlike Luke’s team that had attacked the cattle in Kentucky, Bobby and Marcus had no trouble killing
the humans working for Barnes. Using NVG’s, they’d shot up the cowboy encampment and stampeded the herd, delaying the horde by at least two days. After the cattle were rounded up and new people flown in to shepherd them, the massive herd was kept between two huge groups of hunters in front of and behind them. Maintaining a uniform pace to preserve the necessary distance between the groups was another headache for Barnes and contributed to further delays.

Three days after the attack on the cattle, Barnes’ army was forced to abandon I-55 lest his force be cut off from Vicksburg by the Big Black River. Now the hunters’ advance
was slowed even more as the monsters were forced into what was at times just a ten-mile-wide corridor between the Yazoo and Big Black, an area filled with forests and swamps but only one decent road. With Zach and Maddy at his side, Chad Greenburg led his seasoned troops to work with local river pilots to begin ferrying the soldiers up the Yazoo River, along with plenty of explosives and sniper rifles. This force could put ashore anywhere they wished, hit the enemy hard, then head back to the river-boats and slip away unmolested. For three days, Greenburg’s men, along with Marcus and Bobby, coordinated their hit and run attacks. During that period they killed an estimated two thousand infected while losing just one fire team of three soldiers that got cut off during their retreat to the Yazoo.

Everything the human army tried during Barnes’ march on Vicksburg worked well, but still
the horde’s approach was inexorable. Finally, at sunset on the eighth day following the Battle of Pickwick Dam, the inevitable report arrived from the soldiers harassing the hunter-army: Barnes’ main force was now on Highway 61, just ten miles from the outskirts of Vicksburg. The plan was for a fighting retreat by the 1
st
Utah Division along much of that four-lane road; Jack and Carlson hoped to bleed Barnes along the best route to I-20. An army approaching from the north needed to march down Highway 61 before turning west on I-20, after which the bridges were less than five miles distant. A big problem with the Allied plan was Business 61, a two-lane highway that could also be used by the horde to reach Vicksburg. The engineers had blown great craters in this road near its intersection with the main highway, then littered the remaining surface with wire, bombs, and every other trap they could think of. Finally, three miles down the road they had been able to dig a canal across its path, flooding the entire area with water from the nearby Yazoo River which ran parallel to the old highway at that point. The funnel zone created by the thick forests on either side of Highway 61 was the Allied army’s last real chance to inflict meaningful damage on the enemy before the flesh-eaters were in sight of the bridges, and Jack’s soldiers had been working frantically along the route to prepare for Barnes’ arrival.

The Allied army was fifteen thousand strong, with another three thousand people willing and able to help construct the defenses. Jack doubted that more wire had been placed in such a small area since the
trench warfare of World War I. Concertina had been stretched twenty-feet high in the forests on either side of Highway 61, where Carlson and his soldiers would use a basic phalanx to block the road and send the flesh-eaters into flanking movements through the trees where they would hopefully become entangled in the wire. When the troops blocking the highway could no longer hold a position, they would fall back and blow their former line with propane and dynamite. Jack hoped that the western infantry could delay Barnes for at least a day, as well as kill several tens of thousands of monsters.

    Once the hunter army reached more open ground, just north of the I-20 interchange, the Allies would be forced to fall back to the defensive line they’d constructed along the top of an old railroad cut.
Marcus and Bobby’s team, along with Greenburg’s troops, were to rendezvous there and assist with blowing the interstate bridges over the rails. This would force the creatures to fight their way through a ditch filled with propane-bombs, almost unimaginable amounts of wire, and finally a line of snipers armed with .22 rifles holding the high ground. The soldiers were there to cull the horde, not make a stand, so as soon as their line was compromised they were under orders to retreat back to the bridges over the Mississippi.

Just in front of the spans the hunters would find a huge Allied force standing its ground. Jack had ordered the engineers to construct a series of crescent-shaped berms, each about ten-feet high with a moat in front, and its flanks anchored in the river. Four of the fighting positions were ready, each about thirty meters from the other. The ground between the railroad cut and the first of the berms was filled with traps and bombs, as well as miles of still more concertina wire. The soldiers had gone medieval at this location, filling the earth with tens of thousands of sharpened stakes pointing directly toward the enemy approach. Jack knew that if human casualties were to be high in the coming battle, this was the place his troops would be in the greatest danger. With each retreat the soldiers forming the phalanx would be vulnerable, having to navigate the no-man’s land between the berms with hunters attacking them from behind. Small bridges had been placed across the moats, and bombs of all types had been dug into the ground just below the top of the positions to try to gain the fighters some space when they fell back. But Jack knew that every battle plan only lasted until the first shot was fired, and things could and would go wrong during complicated maneuvers attempted while in contact with the enemy.

When the last defensive position could no longer be held, the soldiers would be forced to conduct a fighting withdrawal, in many places down a steep riverbank, to where barges were waiting to take them to safety. Dozens of snipers with calibers heavier than .22 would be in shooting positions on top of the watercraft where they would do their best to cover what promised to be a confusing retreat under heavy enemy pressure. By that point, the bridges should be shrouded in smoke. One of the Louisiana TV stars, the one who’d fought in Vietnam and usually seemed to be half out of his mind, was proving to be anything but crazy now that he was at war again. He’d pointed out that they’d always carried smoke grenades with them in ‘Nam, which came in handy for all sorts of situations. Here at the bridges, if Jack wanted the helicopters to continue to send the horde against the modified walls, he would have to find a way to interfere with the pilots’ vision of the fight.

Without any grenades or other modern source of creating a smoke screen, the humans had to get creative. One of the Utah soldiers had suggested tying drums of used motor oil over the railings of the bridges with strong cables, before lighting them just as the horde approached. Massive piles of debris, rubbish, and especially tires, were accumulated under the bridges and would be ignited once the hunter-attack on the walls began. Jack had insisted on a practice run three days earlier, and the smoke had been thick enough to cut with a knife. A stiff wind might affect the smoke screen, but even then it would probably still interfere with the pilot’s vision enough to keep them from seeing the full disaster everyone hoped the monsters would be experiencing by this point in the battle. Just to be safe, Jack nearly doubled the amount of oil, tire
s, and debris that had been used in the test.

Now came the most difficult moments any soldiers had to face: the wait for imminent battle to commence. Everything the Allies could think of to kill hunters had been prepared to the best of their people’s ability and knowledge, but the wisest among them knew that there was no way they’d prepared for every contingency. Things would go wrong in the looming battle, and people would die because of it. Some soldiers would break and run when confronted with their first sight of the horde, and entire phalanxes would be endangered due to the gaps the runners left behind. Some bombs would fail to detonate, and a number of fighters would stumble and fall during retreats. Spears would break
, and guns would jam. In other words, the fog of war would descend upon the battlefield when the killing began, and nobody could be certain as to what would remain when the fog lifted.

Luke and Gracie had been assigned to Carter’s command on the right flank in the phalanx fighting in front of the bridges. They would be joined by David, Blake, and Lori from their Ohio team. All of the Fort Wayne troops
, including Zach and Maddy, as well as Chad Greenburg’s men would stand with them to anchor the center of the phalanx defending the ground in front of the bridge. To their left was the 2
nd
Utah Division, while on their right were the troops of what was being called the Mississippi Brigade. All of the locals were part of that force, as were the Louisiana troops and the fighters from the Cairo area. The brigade had just over two thousand soldiers, most of which, it had to be admitted, were of dubious quality when it came to standing in a shield wall and slugging it out with tens of thousands of hunters. Training had been intense over the past week, and though Jack was outwardly pleased with the preparation of the Mississippi Brigade, he still transferred three battalions from Hiram Anderson’s 2
nd
Utah to shore up the locals.

Stephen Carlson’s 1
st
Utah Division, with a half-strength 1
st
Battalion and HQ unit in reserve, would be fighting to hold Highway 61 north of Vicksburg. Jack would be out there with them until they were forced back into the city, an eventuality everyone was hoping would take a few days to occur. When Carlson was forced back, his remaining forces would take up positions on the second defense berm, where they could hopefully provide some cover for the first retreat when it finally took place. Once they were back inside friendly lines, Jack would move to the top of the wall guarding the I-20 Bridge and do his best to coordinate the actions of all units under his leadership. 

One last command conference had been held in the meeting house even as the 1
st
Utah was marching out to block Barnes’ main approach. Jack went over the entire, complicated plan one last time before addressing the gathered soldiers. “In the end, all of our planning will be reduced to you and your soldiers standing in shield walls against more hunters than you’ve ever seen in your life. At that point all we can do is stand and fight. Tell your troops not to worry about what they see and hear around them; Ulysses Grant once said that all battles appear to be lost when you’re in the rear areas. Especially for the units positioned in front of the bridges, you’re going to have retreating soldiers passing through your lines. This is part of the plan, but some of your troops are going to be freaked out by what they see when this happens. They’ll be stepping aside for fighters who are wounded, beaten, and scared, but again, that’s expected. If we stand our ground out there we will win. Any questions before I head out to catch up with Carlson?”