John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Can Die

“Is he bitten?” This man, for sure, was Quebecois, and it took a minute for me to understand him through the thick accent.

Brit astonished me by rattling off a string of French to the man. After a few minutes of back-and-forth, he nodded and shouted back up to the others. A second man rappelled down with a collapsible stretcher, and after a minute or so we were able to wrestle it atop the Zodiac and carefully set Doc onto it. The stretcher was tied off and lifted to the parapet with a crude pulley system. The rest of us, even Ziv, were harnessed in and carefully lifted one at a time to the top of the wall. The two Frenchies remained below, attaching the boat to a series of lines before lifting it clear of the water, winching it into a makeshift gantry.

After I untied myself from the swiss seat, I looked around. Each of the local men was armed with a rifle, their pistol grips and butt stocks shiny from use. Radios beeped, the volume barely loud enough to register. The first man, the one to hail us, untied himself and stepped towards us. “What are you doing here?” His voice was not friendly, but neither was it openly hostile. I saw immediately that they had saved our lives, but didn’t yet see a reason to keep us breathing.

“Do you work for the General?” I asked warily. He hawked in the back of his throat and spit over the wall.

“I guess not,” I murmured. “You see those explosions to the south?”

“Oui. We are not blind.”

“The General and his men are dead. The causeway block failed and the island has been attacked by zombies.”

He swore in French and yanked his radio off his shoulder, barking into it. The voice that came through the radio was American, and speaking English. “Do they have wounded?”

“Oui.”

“Get the wounded to the doctor. Hold the others there. Five minutes.”

Brit and I glanced at each other. The man clipped the radio back in place and extended one hand to me. “I am Pierre.” He said. “We will get your wounded to our docteur. You wait here for Cassandra.”

“Who is Cassandra?” This could either get better or it could get worse, really fast. “I’m not letting you take my wounded away.”

Something in his expression softened. “We will care for them. Cassandra, she is one of you. Do not be afraid.” He touched the flag on Red’s uniform. “We have been waiting for you Americans.”

We all shared wary glances. He wasn’t exactly clarifying the situation. A few minutes later a cart drew up, led by two horses of the same huge breed as those monsters we’d seen outside Schuylerville a year back. Belgian war horses, I think they were called. Doc’s litter was carefully lowered, set perpendicular so that he was not lying directly in the cart, cushioning him from the worst of the jolting. “Ziv, go with him,” I ordered quietly. He might not admit to being wounded, but I wasn’t going to let him stand up here with a broken arm, either. “No one is alone until I sort this out.” For once he didn’t argue with me, just jumped down into the wagon and took a seat next to Doc. The driver clucked to the team and slapped them with the reins.

A trim woman of perhaps sixty was climbing the ladder to the parapet. In looking her way I saw that the entire wall, what I could see, anyway, had a deck, maybe four feet wide, running along the inside. When I’d climbed over, I’d seen that the wall was actually a type of permanent coffer dam: two separate walls of concrete blocks with tons of gravel fill between them. The wall was nearly three feet wide, a more permanent version of the HESCO barriers that had been everywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Name,” she ordered when she reached us. She wore old-style Multicam pants, the ones with the knee pads sewn directly into the fabric, and the brown cotton undershirt.

“Sergeant First Class Nick Agostine, United States Army.”

The woman searched my face intently. Pierre shone his flashlight in my face, not aggressively, but so she could take my measure.

“What just happened on Grand Isle?”

I gave her the short version, but before I could finish she turned to Pierre. “Get our boats to the junction between North and South Hero. Blow that bridge. Get on the radio and inform the North of what’s happened and tell them to get to stations. Expect contact with the Undead before morning. Broadcast South that any survivors should head for the west shore, and to get in the water if zombies come at them. We’ll pick them up in our boats. And tell that fucking pilot to get his ass back in the air and give us a proper recon!” She had to shout that last, because with a “Oui, oui, madame!” he’d already slid down the ladder and hauled ass to what looked like a guard shack a couple hundred meters away.

She turned back and surveyed my team. “Your wounded have been taken to my farm for treatment,” she informed me. “The rest of you will join them once another wagon has arrived. It will be maybe a half hour wait.”

I cut her off. “No offense, but who are you?”

She eyed me. “Before all this shit, I was Sergeant Major Cassandra McIntyre. Retired. Now I’m what you’d call the Mayor of Isle La Motte.”

My eyes narrowed. That name was familiar. “I think we’ve met.”

“If so, it was long ago. I don’t recognize your face or name. The plague broke out just as I was leaving Fort Detrick, my last duty station. Unless you were stationed with me at some point, I doubt we knew each other. And I remember every soldier who was ever under my command.”

I shook my head. “We probably didn’t, but I might have heard of you, if you were in Iraq or Afghanistan.” I hesitated a second. “Some people say the plague started in Detrick.”

She nodded once, crisply. “They would be correct.”

I leaned back, shocked at her casual answer. In the three years since the zombie outbreak, there had been a million theories to how it had happened. “So how did it start?”

“Madame, madame!” The shout came up from below. “General Dupúis!”

“Dammit,” she hissed, leaning over the side. “Tell him Allen is dead and our position is precarious. Tell him to continue mission but we cannot join him for three days. He will have to hold his own until then.”

“What the hell is going on?” I demanded.

She turned back to me. “Long story. I’ll tell you in the morning.”

“You are aware of the call-up of retirees three years ago? You should be back on Active Duty right now, Sergeant Major. You’re breaking the law by remaining here.”

“I hadn’t heard, as a matter of fact.” I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. “But my duty is here and if the US government wants to retake New England in the next century, they’ll be smart enough to leave me here. You said Allen is dead. How do you know?”

“We shot him in both legs and left him on the south side of the island. He’s probably a zombie by now.”

Her face was unreadable in the darkness, which by now was total, the guards having switched off their flashlights and gone back to patrolling the deck, excepting one young trooper who stood at the Sergeant Major’s left shoulder. Her bodyguard, I assumed.

“Good.” She managed a world of satisfaction in that one word.

I relaxed. Whatever the whole story about her presence here, she wasn’t connected to Allen and my wounded were getting treatment. She glanced over her shoulder. “Your ride is early.”

Sure enough, another wagon pulled by those giant horses had appeared. One by one my team climbed down and pulled themselves into it. Padded with straw, it wasn’t too bad even with the jolting. I pulled myself up towards the front, hooking one elbow over the front of the wagon, at her left side. The Sergeant Major drove, clucking gently at the team and occasionally slapping the reins against their backs. The rest of the guards we left behind, and I looked back to see them spreading along the wall to their original positions. Next to the Sergeant Major sat the young trooper. We jolted along the remains of a paved road for perhaps an hour, gradually turning away from the edge of the wall. “What is that?” I asked over the clopping hooves.