Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (43 page)

Luke saw Gracie and Lori running back from the railroad cut and realized that they were going to make it, Marcus and Bobby too. They passed through the phalanx far to his left, so he couldn’t call out to them, but he shouted in joy and relief as they disappeared into the tightly packed ranks of waiting soldiers. Behind them came the hunters, many missing limbs and bearing horrible burns
, but still seeking human flesh. This first wave of monsters was dropped with little effort, the relatively inexperienced troops of the Mississippi Brigade cheering until they saw the massed horde coming toward them at a steady trot.

Lanes had been left open for the retreating snipers, but most of the ground in front of the phalanx was filled with more of the stakes and wire that had already stopped thousands of hunters. Luke knew that the horde would simply push up and over these obstacles with no concern for how many of their own they left dead and injured in their wake, but the traps did reduce the severity of first impact between the two armies. With practiced ease
, he impaled the first monster on the halberd he’d planted in the frozen ground at his feet, then flipped another over his shield before huddling behind the plexiglass and beginning to push. Stanley Rickers’ veterans were in the second and third lines, and they were spearing and hacking the hunters as fast as they appeared. All Luke could see was a steady fountain of black-blood raining down the front of his shield.

In one of those strange, isolated lulls common to combat from within shield walls, the pressure in front of Luke, David, and Blake mom
entarily disappeared. The three ultra-experienced warriors immediately pulled short swords and axes from their weapon belts and went to work on the nearby hunters. For half a minute the efficiently lethal trio stabbed and hacked to death a score of creatures before the tide ebbed back in their direction. At that point they all yielded to the shouts from behind demanding that they rotate from the front. As Luke scrambled back through the lines of the phalanx, breathing heavily and longing to drink from his water bottle, all he could think was,
We’re holding, we’re holding.
After his thirst was sated and he’d had a chance to catch his breath, pragmatism reminded him that the day was still young.

CHAPTER 24

Jack could
see the entire battlefield. He was happy to note that there was indeed an end to the horde, but the monsters were still lined up over two-hundred deep as they steadily pushed and clawed their way forward. The Blackhawks kept moving above the hunter-army in unpredictable patterns, keeping a good distance from any place that even looked like it might be holding a sniper with a .50 cal. There were, in fact, five Barretts deployed on the walls, but in spite of the steady fire they were maintaining against the helicopters, not even one appeared to sustain any damage. The veterans within the Allied army knew full-well how hard it was to hit a moving aircraft with anything, even guided munitions, and they knew that Chad Greenburg had made a once-in-a-lifetime shot at Pickwick to bring down a Blackhawk. Some experienced soldiers even had their doubts about the Barrett being the cause of the chopper crash at the dam. But the army had the guns and the ammo, and the general feeling was that it couldn’t hurt to try for anything within even theoretical range of the guns.

As Jack watched the phalanx absorb the first enemy blow
, he let out a sigh of relief when the entire line held. He knew that the 2
nd
Utah and the Indiana Company would almost certainly stand their ground, at least for a few minutes, but he had his doubts about the Mississippi Brigade. A few seconds later he saw that his doubts were justified. For whatever reason, the horde hit the Allied right with more power than the center or left. Maybe the wire and other traps had been less effective in that area. Jack would never know the cause of the higher enemy numbers on the right, only witness the effects of the disproportionality. The Louisiana soldiers to the right of the Indiana troops were pushed back a few meters, but then they stiffened and stood solid under the vicious onslaught. The break occurred where the Cairo and local levies were stationed, and Jack was certain he was about to witness a disaster until man’s best friend showed up.

At least a hundred well-trained war-dogs had been led into battle by their owners, and in the confusion of the jarring impact with the enemy
, most of them found that their leashes were suddenly loose. The canines had spent months hunting down and attacking the infected, supposedly immune to the virus if their owners were to be believed. Since no one had ever seen an infected dog, there wasn’t much reason to doubt their immunity. They could, however, be caught by the hunters and crushed or ripped apart, so what happened next was arguably the most selfless act Jack had ever witnessed in all his years as a soldier.

The war-dogs ran between the legs of the massed flesh-eaters, ripping away at Achilles Tendons and hamstrings with a ferocity that would have made their wolf-cousins proud. Jack estimated that every dog brought at least one hunter down before being grabbed and killed by the furious beasts, but some of the more experienced animals eluded the grasping monsters and literally ripped a swath through the forward enemy ranks. Some of the flesh-eaters had continued to push forward toward the humans, but many others had become distracted by the presence of vicious canines at their feet and momentarily turned their attention to the threat from below. The attack on the Mississippi Brigade slowed enough for the local and Cairo troops to refo
rm their ranks and push back, and almost a third of the heroic dogs managed to circle through the horde and return to their masters unharmed.

Jack could hardly believe what he’d just seen. A hundred war-dogs had prevented well over ten thousand hunters from collapsing the Allied right. The cost to
their own ranks had been disastrous, and even the survivors were now spent, but the animals had just conducted the most fearless act imaginable to save their owners. Jack realized that he was shouting his appreciation for the dogs, his voice joined by dozens of other defenders manning the walls who had also witnessed the noble sacrifice.

The tumult around him gradually died down, and Jack could see that the phalanx was now in trouble everywhere. The Allies had the high ground, sharp steel, and the resolve only people defending their loved ones can have in battle, but those advantages couldn’t stop the laws of physics. Tens o
f thousands of powerful hunters, human bodies genetically altered to maximize every ounce of potential, were now pushing together against a far lesser number of people in all types of conditions. Inevitably, the formation was steadily forced back from the top of the first berm. Jack nodded at T.C., who shouted out for the retreat to begin.

The signal to fall back was a chorus of air-horns scavenged from big ships on the river. Even over the noise of thousands of howls, shouts, screams, and cries, the devices crushed all other sounds as they roared out from the top of the wall. Everyone heard the horns, but responses varied across the field. Most of the Mississippi Brigade tried to race each other back to the secondary position, and they were promptly swamped by the hunters they’d just been fighting. Most of the unit’s casualties during the battle were suffered during this first retreat. The Louisiana companies suffered from a crumbling right flank as their less-disciplined allies broke for the rear, but they still kept their weapons pointed toward the enemy and backed up step by stumbling step. The Indiana Company moved backward in time, coordinated to a degree that only such a small unit can be.

The soldiers of the 2
nd
Utah Division tried a different tactic, which wasn’t bloodless but worked comparably well. When the horns sounded the retreat, the westerners immediately executed one last troop rotation, ensuring that the front lines were relatively fresh. At that point, the first three lines were left on their own as all other soldiers rushed back through the lines of the waiting 1
st
Division. As soon as the rear lines were heading up the slope of the second berm, the soldiers still engaged made their break. Virtually as one they thrust their spears forward and immediately began stumbling backward while drawing short swords. At that point the propane-bombs dug into the forward side of the slope were detonated, creating a gap in the hunter attack that allowed the retreating troops to turn and kill their immediate pursuers before disappearing through their comrades’ lines.

Across the entire front of the phalanx the explosives caused their usual mayhem, blowing hundreds of monsters into pieces while knocking even more to the ground where they were slow to get up, if they ever got up again. Most of the time the fallen were quickly trampled by the flesh-eaters still pushing from the rear. Jack had seen it several times the day before, but he was still in awe of the damage a line of wired propane tanks could do to massed hunters. He wondered, briefly, if they ever would have learned to use the explosive gas if his unruly, teenage scouts hadn’t taken their prisoner in Kentucky. Focusing his attention back on the battle, Jack could see that with the exception of the units on the far right, the troops had managed to retreat without being too badly mauled. But the horde was now rushing over the top of the
berm toward the second position. He hoped the shortened line would allow the Allies to hold longer than they did the first time.

Luke and t
hose closest to him, including Maddie and Zach, joined their left flank to the 1
st
Utah’s as they reached the top of the second defensive position and turned to cover their comrades’ retreat. The soldiers from the Indiana Company were already anchored in place, the reliable and rugged Louisiana troops forming up on their right as three battalions from the 2
nd
Utah crossed the interior lines to reinforce the struggling remnants of the remaining units of the Mississippi Brigade. Luke could sense that this phalanx was deeper, stronger, and more determined to hold than the first had been. Now that they’d experienced the nightmare that was retreating under pressure, every soldier in the formation hoped to avoid another withdrawal.

This time the full pressure of the horde was obvious from the beginning of the assault. The helicopters were apparently exerting total control of the hunters as the beasts stomped the
ir fallen mates into the cold, gore-covered mud and pressed forward their attack. Regardless of the troops’ hopes to avoid another retreat, the fury and savagery of the monsters had become impossible to check. Luke didn’t know if all the bodies being forced up and over his shield were dead or not, but he could do little but push forward with all his strength and hope that the soldiers behind were using their weapons effectively. These hunters didn’t seem to care about flesh or killing, they were simply determined to scramble out of the path of those shoving from the rear. Again, the far greater numbers of the infected quickly sapped the strength of the humans resisting their advance.

The horns again sounded the retreat, and this time every unit had to cut their way to the third berm. With the echoes of the call still bouncing around his eardrums, Luke felt the pressure behind him give way suddenly and completely. He tried to take a controlled step backward but immediately stumbled over a corpse and fell into a pile of gore that was the stuff of nightmares. Th
rough his left glove he felt an iron-fisted grip clench onto his hand and yank him rearward from the horrific morass he’d become entangled in. He tried to see who had him, but his visor was literally clouded with blood and what looked like strands of intestines. He had no idea if the gore was human or not, but he wasn’t about to let go of his axe to try to clear his view. Finally he felt himself being pulled to his feet by rough hands as the ground shook from the second line of bombs being detonated. Somebody wiped a rag over his visor, and when he could finally see, he realized that he was in the midst of one of the Louisiana Companies.

The soldier who’d pulled him from certain death was none other than the old man who’d promised
that his troops would hold their ground. “You all right, son?” he shouted.

Luke just nodded before lifting his axe as his answer. The old man grinned through his blood-spattered visor as if he was out hunting or otherwise enjoying himself. He smacked Luke on the shoulder good naturedly before turning
to a soldier by his side and yelling, “Ready to get back in there, brother?”

Then he was gone, and Luke looked left to see David catching his breath behind the Indiana lines. Luke tried briefly to find the hardy patriarch, wanting to thank him befo
re heading back to his own unit, but the fierce old warrior had headed back to the front lines with his brother in tow, both of the gray-beards displaying the strength and energy of young athletes. Luke stared after them in amazement before slowly stumbling toward his friends.

Jack could only watch as the units under his command were steadily whittled away by the unrelenting attack of the hunter-army. The Alli
es were now struggling to hold the final berm. The ground was literally covered with the bodies of dead and wounded hunters, a carpet of flesh and gore stretching all the way back to the railroad-cut. The number and condition of the corpses worsened the closer he looked to where they phalanx had first stood, but there he could see pieces of humans liberally sprinkled among the dead monsters. If the creatures were eating anyone today, Jack had yet to see evidence of it; they simply ripped apart every person they caught and kept attacking. He estimated that less than half of the forces that had been present at the beginning of the battle two hours ago were still on their feet. Not all of the missing were dead, of course, certainly not even half—the stream of wounded to the rear never stopped or even slowed.