Rotters: Bravo Company (8 page)

We approached the river. A few log canoes were drawn up on the muddy riverbank. We stopped at the riverside and stared at the swirling, muddy waters.

Suddenly Gordo jerked his head around. He lifted his gun and looked wildly around.

“What is it?” McAllister hissed.

I couldn’t see or hear anything.

“There,” Gordo whispered. He pointed to the forest beyond the canoes. “Listen.”

I listened carefully. I could faintly hear a low moaning.

Sgt. McAllister moved to the left. He waved us back behind him and glided noiselessly forward through the trees. I moved up to support him, behind and to his right. I lifted my gun to my shoulder, and slowly advanced.

The sergeant stopped and lowered his shotgun. “Gordo, get up here.”

We advanced until we were beside the sergeant. A withered old man sat in the mud before us, cradling a muddy straw doll. He rocked back and forth with his eyes closed, moaning softly.

“Try to talk to him, Gordo,” the sergeant whispered.

Gordo crept forward. He slowly reached out to gently touch the old man’s arm.

The man’s eye’s fluttered open. He looked around, but he didn’t seem to register anything.

Gordo spoke softly to him in Congolese. The old man muttered and moaned.

“Ask him what happened here,” McAllister suggested. 

Gordo translated. He repeated his question again.

The old man finally replied.

“He says the old ones came back. The dead,” Gordo finally said.

“What does he mean?” McAllister asked.

Gordo questioned the old man. He replied in mutters, sobbing softly.

“I don’t know, Sergeant,” Gordo said, shaking his head. “He is saying something about the dead coming from the trees. It doesn’t make any sense. I think he has lost his mind.”

“Ask him where the people are, the villagers who lived here,” McAllister urged.

Gordo translated the question.

The old man lifted his arm. He pointed shakily into the forest. He mumbled a single word.

Gordo stood up. “He said gone.”

We didn’t find any other survivors. Gordo suggested that we bring the old man with us, but McAllister told him no. The sergeant wanted to get back to our camp as fast as we could, the elderly man would only slow us down.

We left the village behind us and raced back along the trail. Lightning flashed in the distance, and it grew noticeably darker as we moved into the trees. We walked as fast as we could, practically at a jog. We were about half way back when the wind picked up and the rain hit. Fat, warm drops spattered down past the canopy and ran in rivulets from the leaves overhead. We paused long enough to put on our ponchos.

“Shit, this is really going to slow us down,” the sergeant complained.

We forged ahead through the storm. As he had predicted, the trail quickly turned into a muddy quagmire of sucking black mud. Our pace slowed as we progressed.

Lightning flashed through the treetops, and thunder rolled back to us from the west. The sergeant stopped and held us back. He knelt in the trail, and reached back to pull us down. The rain fell in buckets and I couldn’t see shit.

“What is it
Sarge?” I whispered.

“Ten o’clock, ahead of us, and two,” he hissed back at me.

I peered ahead through the deluge. Lightning flashed, illuminating the forest. For a split second I could see.

Zombies were moving slowly ahead of us through the trees. Dozens of them were just forward of our position to either side of the trail, moving away from us, back towards our camp.

“What’s the plan?” Gordo inquired in a hushed voice.

“They’re going to hit the camp again,” the sergeant replied. “We need to get back there ahead of them to warn the others. When I give the word, run. Stay on the trail, I’ll fall back a little to make sure you guys get through. Don’t look back. That’s an order.”

I tensed.

“Go!” McAllister urged.

Gordo and I sprinted down the muddy trail. I slipped in the muck and almost went down. I knew if I did I was dead. I recovered and scrambled on. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel the zombies on either side reaching out through the pouring rain to grab me. Gordo was faster than me, and he pulled ahead on down the trail. We slipped through them in the deluge, and ran for our lives.

I ran until I was winded and had to stop. Gordo had disappeared into the forest ahead of me. I heard McAllister’s shotgun go off through the trees behind me, again and again. I had just decided to go back and look for him when the sergeant burst through the falling rain and almost ran me down. 

“What are you doing, Parsons?” he shouted. “Run!”

We ran through the driving rain and the mud until we reached the village. We trudged through to the other side and reentered our perimeter lines. Gordo was already there in his foxhole. Hard-on waved to me.

“I told them!” Gordo shouted.

“Great!” McAllister shouted back. He ran on into the camp. I dropped into my foxhole. It had already partially filled with muddy warm water, that sloshed into my already wet boots.

“This sucks!” I screamed to the uncaring skies. It began to rain harder.

Sgt. McAllister sloshed back to our side of the square. His arms were full of small green rectangular boxes. I recognized them immediately. He had brought back about a dozen Claymore mines. He wasn’t fucking around anymore.

He sloshed past me towards the village. “Cover me!” he shouted back.

I could barely see him through the downpour. Lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. The storm broke upon us in all its tropical fury. The wind whipped up, scattering debris and leaves, and driving the rain into my eyes.

I stood in my foxhole and brought my rifle up to my shoulder. I was careful to keep my finger off the trigger. I scanned the huts beyond the sergeant for any sign of movement.

  McAllister struggled through the mud, hastily setting each mine into the muck, and stringing the detonator line out to the mine beside it.
He daisy chained the mines together in pairs, moving left to right, setting a twosome and then moving closer to our line, and setting another pair.

The sergeant armed the last pair directly before us, only twenty feet away, and ran back.

He knelt beside me and yelled in my ear, “I’m going to be on the left corner with the SAW. Watch the right side! If you’re overrun, fall back to the Humvees if you’re able. Luck!”

He disappeared into the rain.

OPS ORD 9-45

SPECIAL FORCES UNIT TO RELIEVE BRAVO COMPANY ENROUTE

ARMY OFFICER CAPTAIN TUCKER, SAMUEL, J. TO ASSUME COMMAND IMMEDIATE

SECURE ALL SAMPLES AND DATA, STAND BY FOR EVACUATION

ORDERS END

05:58 p.m. Zulu

Medical Unit HQ

The Congo

I stood in the pouring rain and waited. I knew the zombies were out there, just beyond the first huts, moving towards us through the village. Time slowed to a crawl and seemed to stop. The stress of combat did weird things to your perceptions.

My straining eyes began to imagine zombies everywhere. My finger tightened on the trigger but I didn’t have a clear target. No one else was firing. The lightning illuminated the killing zone between the huts and our line; it was still clear.

“Come on, you fuckers,” I growled. I rubbed my eyes and covered them with my hand, attempting vainly to keep the rain out of my sight.

A lightning bolt hit the trees just outside the village. The brilliant white light blinded me for a second. The thunder broke almost simultaneously as the first zombie hit the lead Claymore’s trip wire. A bright red flash overlaid the white afterimages flickering in my eyes, and a deafening roar filled my ears. I dimly heard the SAW shooting to my left.

I followed the tracers out to the zombies who were streaming out of the village and onto the killing ground. Many of them were down, their legs blown off or shattered by the Claymores. They struggled to stand or pull themselves forward. I fired off a full magazine at anything that still moved.

Zombie after zombie staggered forward from between the bullet riddled huts. I ejected my empty and slammed in a fresh magazine. The lead zombie on my right hit another Claymore wire. The mines went off in a simultaneous wave of destruction, shattering everything before them with seven-hundred screaming steel balls. The zombies were flung back in a crimson flash of mutilation. The closest were eviscerated and shredded beyond the endurance of the human body. They didn’t rise again. Those farthest away were only crippled or knocked down. They struggled towards us, pulling themselves along with their broken limbs on ripped open bellies. The Claymores went off to my left with a flash and a roar.

Someone threw a flare onto the battlefield. It illuminated a scene straight from the deepest pits of Hell in a flickering white light. Everywhere I looked partial cadavers and crippled, bullet-riddled zombies struggled to pull themselves forward across a wriggling, squirming, moving carpet of dismembered bloody human body parts.

I screamed in horror and defiance. I began to systematically fire into the heads of the closest zombies, splattering the mud with chunks of slimy grey brain matter.

Still the fuckers came on. They stumbled, they slithered, they stumped and they crawled.

A partial cadaver wiggled into the wire strung between the last two Claymores. The shockwave tossed me back into my hole. Everything directly before me was lifted and flung backwards, utterly destroyed. The steel ball bearings threw up small splash holes in the blood soaked ground. I slid down into my foxhole, momentarily stunned.

The rain poured down on me and brought me awake. Someone grabbed me by my webbing’s shoulder strap and tried to haul me up out of my hole. I looked up and pissed myself. A one armed, disemboweled zombie was trying to pull me up towards his snapping, broken teeth. I wedged my M-4 between us and pulled the trigger. The zombie disintegrated into rotting, gory chunks. It’s thrashing legs slid into the hole with me.

I fled the foxhole, pulling myself out and back across the slimy mud. The thing’s hand still clung spider-like to my harness. I pulled it loose and flung it away. I lay trembling in the mud.

The rain washed over me. I knew I should get up, that I should reload my gun and get back into the fight. Somehow I didn’t care anymore.

Dimly over the ringing in my ears I heard someone shouting my name. I looked around in confusion.

Hard-on was standing beside me. He blasted a legless crawling cadaver that was almost on top of me, and kicked it away back into the muck.

“Get up!” he screamed at me.

He pulled me to my feet, and led me back away from the line. We retreated towards the tents. Someone helped me sit down in the mud, and then everything went black.

When I came to it had stopped raining and the sun was up. It felt like early morning. I sat upright and put a hand to the back of my head. A bandage was wound around my dome. I could feel a goose egg under the wrappings. I was on an Army cot inside a tent. One of the flaps was tied back. The smell of rotting meat hit me; I gagged and panicked. For a spilt second I thought I was in the sample tent. I looked around wildly.

No one else was with me. I slowly sat upright and swung my legs over the side, gingerly got up, and stumbled outside. The bright sunlight hurt my eyes.

“Look who’s alive,” Sgt. McAllister joked. He was standing near the Humvees with Sgt. Price and Hard-on. I slowly limped over to join them.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’ve been getting that a lot this morning,” the sergeant replied. “Hard-on brought you back off the line. It was a mess out there, but the Claymores broke up most of the concentrated attack. The fuckers are still coming in though.”

A rifle went off nearby.

“See,” the sergeant pointed out.

“Please tell me we are pulling out now,” I pleaded.

“The officers are discussing that as we speak,” McAllister replied. “I suggested it, but it hasn’t been decided yet. At this point I think even the old man is ready to go.”

“Did we lose anybody?” I asked.

“Oh yea,” the sergeant rejoined grimly. “They got Lt. Reid. Hell, we suffered fifty percent casualties between 1st and 2nd platoons. You and Hard-on are it for your squad; even some of the mechanics and medics who weren’t in the lines bought it. Things got real bad last night. Some of those fuckers broke through the perimeter and wandered around in here for a while before I could clear em out. I think the major is pretty shook up.”

“Good,” I replied.

“Well, we will see,” McAllister countered. “The colonel has the final word, and I didn’t see him fighting any zombies.” He walked away.

“Thanks, Hard-on,” I mumbled.

“For what? Last night? Forget it man. You would have done the same for me,” he said. “Come on, you’ve got to see this shit.”

Hard-on led me back through camp to our foxholes. The ground beyond was blasted and burned. Everywhere I looked jumbles of fire blackened human bones protruded from the churned up, muddy ground. I wrinkled my nose. It smelled like a cannibal barbeque gone horribly wrong; a mixture of gasoline, burnt rotten meat and bloody shit.

“Wow,” I finally uttered. “Did we do all that?”

“Some of it,” Hard-on replied. “There were so many shot up zombie pieces out there this morning that they finally just dumped gas on everything and let it burn. You should have seen em wiggle. Man, did it stink.”

“You know, I think Gunner may have been right,” I muttered.

“What do you mean?” Hard-on asked.

“I think this place is cursed,” I replied. 

I limped around the perimeter of the camp, looking for some place to escape the smell. It was no use; the foul, rotten stench permeated everything, and hung in the air. I could taste it.

I passed a sniper positioned on each side of the square, sited there to shoot the occasional zombie that still wandered out of the rain forest. The area beyond the perimeter on each side of the camp was a disaster zone. The muddy earth was burned and blasted. Everywhere I looked, broken human bones protruded from the scorched earth.  I wondered what the UN would think of this mess.

Even with my hands over my ears I could still faintly hear the moans of the specimens the colonel was keeping in the sample tent to experiment on. I was absolutely convinced that the noise was attracting more zombies from the forest all around us. I was also pretty sure the colonel had lost his grip on reality. He didn’t seem to have a fucking clue about what was going on out here.

The whole situation was absolutely insane.

Finally, I wandered over to the Humvees and collapsed against one of their oversized tires. I considered my options. They were slim. I even thought about desertion. I could steal a Humvee and make a run for it. At this point I seriously doubted that anyone would even shoot at me, or bother to come after me. The only problem was that I didn’t really have any place to go. I was in the middle of the DRC. The only thing for miles in every direction was more rainforest, more zombies, and the rebels.

I was fucked.

My only chance to escape was to convince Sgt. McAllister that we should leave. The major hated my guts; he would feed me to the zombies if he got the chance. Talking to him was out. I couldn’t talk to the colonel and I didn’t think it would do any good, anyway. He seemed determined to stay until we were all dead. Lt. Reid was gone and Lt. Beckham wouldn’t support me against the major.

McAllister had access to all of the officers, and they would listen to him carefully. He was the senior NCO, and the officers respected his experience and opinion. The only problem was that he played too damn straight and by the rules. He was old school Army. He would obey an order if it killed him, literally.

I respected him for that; the only problem was it was going to get me killed too, and that wasn’t going to work out for me.

Finally, I got my head together and walked back into the camp. I noticed there weren’t as many personnel moving around as there had been before; all the more reason to blow this place.

I found Hard-on and Sadler at the mess tent. I took them aside and talked to them about my plan.

They were both for leaving, but wanted me to do the talking, and take the heat, as usual.

I finally got them to agree to back me up with McAllister.

We found the sergeant at the supply tent. He and Sgt. Price were sitting at an improvised table, drinking beers and smoking. They had set up an empty crate for a table, and were sitting on stacked ammunition boxes. They both looked up as we entered the tent.

“Is this a private party or can anyone come in?” I asked.

“Enter,” McAllister grunted.

We squeezed inside. Sgt. Price handed us each a warm beer. He passed Hard-on a cigarette.

“Is this one mishanga, or on the house?” Hard-on asked.

“These are on me,” Price answered.

Sgt. McAllister lit a cigar, pulled on it and exhaled. The smoke helped to dampen the stench of the camp. He looked us over.

“We want to talk to you, Sarge,” I started.

“Ah, the inevitable mutiny,” McAllister laughed. “Let me guess, you pussies have had enough and you want to go home.”

Hard-on and Sadler looked down at the ground, but I looked him straight in the eye.

“None of us signed on for this shit,” I shot back. “Motherfucking zombies, a virus. Come on,
Sarge.”

“Feel free to speak your mind, Parsons,” the sergeant encouraged me. “Get it all out of your system.”

“I think this whole mission has passed beyond sanity and straight to bullshit,” I said bluntly. “We cannot hold this camp against another attack! Half the company is dead! Look around, Sarge. Our mission here is over. It was over before we got here. We are defending an untenable position so that the colonel
can play doctor with a bunch of walking corpses! The major doesn’t have the balls to do anything about it. If we don’t leave we are all gonna die here,” I concluded.

“I think you’re right,” McAllister replied. To my surprise he didn’t get angry or rebuke me. He just sat there and puffed on his cigar.

“So, we’re leaving?” I asked.

“Didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “I agree with most everything you said, but we’re still going to follow orders. We are going to defend this camp until we are relieved, or we die. That is what you swore to do when you enlisted.”

“Sarge…” I began.

McAllister interrupted me, “Parsons, you’re smart enough to figure out why we are going to stay here. It doesn’t have anything to do with how fucked up the orders are, or what makes sense, or even how deep in the shit we all are. It’s about honor, and duty. It is to make sure your friend
Jonesy, the LT and the others didn’t die for nothing. I’m sure you’ll do the right thing. Just do me a favor, and stop bitching about it. Bitch, bitch, bitch, it’s all you fuckers do. I’m not your fucking Mother!”

That shut me up for a minute.

“You’re not the first smart-assed punk to ever question orders, Parsons,” the sergeant laughed. “And you don’t know everything. I got more tricks up my sleeve than a cat’s got whiskers. You might live through this mess, yet. You boys help me and Sgt. Price drink some beer and whiskey. We’ll put our heads together and see if we can figure this shit out.”

I knew if I couldn’t convince the Sarge to pull out, then I was stuck. I’d just have to make the best of it.

We sat in the tent and drank and smoked. No one bothered us for a while. We tried to talk about other shit to take our minds off our problems, but eventually we all stopped trying.

“Has anybody even talked to the brass,” I asked. “Does anyone outside Africa even know what’s going down here?”