John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Need a Break

“Who wrote this shit? It looks like it was written by a first year ROTC cadet,” scoffed Doc.

Blah blah blah. Again, we were off on our own with little support. Not that a battery of Paladin 155mm howitzers were something to laugh at, but I had already spoken to the Task Force Fire Support Officer. The conversation went kinda like this:

“Don’t expect shit from me.”

“Roger, Sir, won’t expect shit.” He wasn’t being a jerk, just explained to me that he had literally thousands of standard high explosive rounds but few if any of the new firecrackers, the ones that sprayed ball bearings all over their blast radius.

“The fighting down in Mexico in the oil fields took up a lot of the production priority, and the chemicals used to produce the high explosive are in short supply. We can fire regular shrapnel rounds all day long, but you know they don’t do much against Zs.”

So, as usual, off again on our own. We did have one attachment, an Air Force sergeant who specialized in Flight Operations. He walked up to the team as I was reading the Operations Order.

“Uh, hi, my name is Sergeant Ozturk. Call sign “Wizard.” I’m looking for some Special Operations guys, uh, IST-1 or something. Have you seen them?”

He was talking to Brit, who had taken to wearing a red bandanna around her head. Said it made her look more like a pirate with her eye patch. I was ignoring it until we actually rolled out of the base.

“Well, looks like you found us. What are you, some kinda general or something with all those stripes on your arm?”

“Uh, no, I’m just a technical sergeant.”

“Well, OK, are you like one of those PJs? A parajumper?” He was getting a little red in the face, because as she questioned him, Brit poked him in his rather large stomach several times.

“Um, well, no. You see, I know how to run airports. I’m supposed to go with you guys to check out the airport.”

She turned to face Red. “Hey Red, do we have a trailer we can use to haul Mister Dunkin Donuts here out to the airport?”

I stepped up, and told Brit to cut the crap. “Welcome to the Lost Boys, Tech Sergeant. Soon as we get you checked out on the weapons on the turrets, you’re free to stow your gear in the back.”

“Uh, I dunno, I’ve never fired any kind of automatic weapon. I think I might just get in your way.”

Brit rolled her eyes, and I shot her a dirty look. The rest of the guys pretended to be busy. “Well, how about that M-4 you’re carrying. Can you use it?”

“What, this?” he said and slung it off his shoulder, sweeping it around in a wide arc that flagged most of the team, holding it by the grip with his finger on the trigger. It had a magazine in, too. I smacked the weapon down toward the ground before Ziv could buttstroke him. He looked very embarrassed.

“Well, uh, I fired it a few times in Basic Training. At least a whole magazine. They don’t give much ammo to us Air Force guys since the Army needs it.”

“Don’t worry about it!” I said, with a forced grin. After all, it wasn’t this guy’s fault. Like everyone else, he went where the military told him.

“Tell you what, Brother Zoomie Guy. You just ride in back and let us do the shooting. I assume you know how to do your job?”

A look of relief passed over his face. “Yeah, sure, airports I know.”

I lay there on the hood of the HUMVEE, trying to get some sleep, wrapped up in my poncho liner. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, and we had to get up at 0500. I stared up at the stars in the clear, high plains air, and tried to force myself to sleep, but it eluded me again. I could take the Ambien Doc kept in his medkit but I hated it. It never felt like sleep then, just like a period of blackness, and I woke up even more tired.

When I finally did drift off to sleep, the dream started again. I was standing in the kitchen of my old house, dressed in full combat gear, my rifle slung over my shoulder. Outside the window I could see a horde of zombies pressing against the glass. There was no sound in the dream; there never was. It just happened over and over in the same way. I reached for my daughter, who was playing on the kitchen floor. Just as I did she crawled away from me. Always she crawled away, and I could never pick her up. What happened next in the dream was almost a repeat of what really happened that day, except that day I never got to see my daughter.

I looked up, and my wife stood there, blood dripping down her face, a large gash ripped open in her neck, blood splattered down her side. In her hand was our daughter’s leg, still wearing a pink sock. She reached for me, and in the dream, I wanted to go to her. It was such a powerful urge that I could never resist it, and I always woke with a jump as she bit down on my shoulder.

In reality, I had moved faster than that. I had swung the stock of my M-16 as hard as I could at her head, and kept swinging until her head was a bloody pulp and the plastic rifle had shattered apart in my hands.

Tonight was no different. I dreamed the dream again, and woke with a start just as the predawn light was filtering into the sky. I looked at my watch, 04:23, and tried to wrap myself a little deeper in the poncho liner. Thirty-seven minutes of sleep was thirty-seven minutes of sleep, any old soldier knows that, but I was afraid of drifting off into the nightmare again.

On the roof of the truck, Brit lay wrapped in the green half of a Gortex sleeping bag. I listened to her moving around restlessly. She probably had her own nightmares to deal with, too. A year spent living on the deserted campus, dodging zombies, scrounging for food. I knew she had been a physics major, smart as hell, and I wondered if she would ever shed her new, post-apocalypse persona of a “live life to the fullest, devil may care” hedonist. Probably not; there was no going back to our old lives. Still, I looked forward to the day when we could put our guns down, I could pick up a hammer and a saw again, and maybe build a new life with Brit.

A muffled ripping sound came from the top of the truck, and Red, who was lying on the other side of the turret, made a puking sound. “OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT SMELL?”

Brit laughed and said, “That, ladies and gentlemen, is why they call it a fart sack!”

Ziv, who was sitting watch on top of the other truck, laughed out of the fading darkness. “You are pig, Woman, but I like you.”

“OK, screw it,” I said, looking at my watch again. 04:37. “Everyone up, thirty minutes to shit, shower and shave.” Muffled groans sounded from inside the cab of the HUMVEE, where Ahmed was curled around the doghouse radio mount. I have no idea how he slept like that. Ziv shook Doc in his sleeping bag on the other hood, then jumped down and kicked the little pup tent the Air Force guy had set up.

“Time to make donuts, Fat Boy!” he yelled inside the tent flap, and laughed at the cursing that came back at him.

“Time to make the donuts, you foreign pig. Get it right.”

Well, I guess morale was OK. As the sun came up, I broke out the handy wipes and cleaned yesterday’s dust and sweat off of my face, armpits and crotch. Then I shaved with cold water, using my canteen cup and the truck mirror. Through the cab of the truck, I could see Redshirt applying camouflage to his face, making a series of vertical stripes from forehead to chin.

“Hey Red,” I called through the window “putting your war paint on?”

“Yes I am, Sergeant. Today is going to be bad shit. I can feel it in my bones.”

“OK, but just don’t get caught up in the irregular part of Irregular Scouts. You’re still a part of the Army, unlike Brit, Ahmed or Ziv.”

“I got you, Boss. I just have a bad feeling about today, and I want to go to war properly, if you know what I’m saying”