John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Need a Break

Losing a friend is hard. When that friend was one I thought of as my brother, it was even harder. The helo thundered upriver, back to Firebase Castle. I kept seeing Jonesy in my mind, swinging away at the Zombies with that big piece of metal he always carried, leading them away from us so we could board the chopper and get to safety. Ahmed’s bullet ripping through his heart.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, in my mind anyway. In the movies, you get shot, you fall down. No blood, no gore. In real life, this sucky, post-apocalypse life anyway, you can see the blood splash out. It looked black in the light of the full moon. Again and again it replayed in my mind.

I sat leaning up against the wall of the CH-47. Brit was wrapped in a blanket and Doc was keeping an eye on her. Ahmed was up front with the pilot and SPC Mya was cleaning her weapon while she yelled nonstop in Redshirt’s ear, trying to be heard over the sound of the turbine engines. She was trying to keep him awake until we landed at the base and he was admitted to the hospital.

Below me the waters of the Hudson River reflected the silver moonlight. I started to shake, my hands clenched tightly together, and I threw up over the edge of the ramp. The vomit immediately blew back into the compartment from the powerful downdraft of the rotors, and the crew chief shot me a dirty look. Screw him.

We had been hurt, badly. Lt. Carter, attached to the mission, was dead, in a stupid, suicidal charge against a crowd of Zombies. My friend and teammate for the last two years, Jonesy, had saved my life again, and had paid the full price for it. I could never pay him back now.

I knew what we had to do. After we had dropped off Redshirt and Brit at the base, we needed to head back and recover Jonesy’s body. Zombies never eat corpses. They will only chew on you as long as you have a spark of life in you. Ahmed’s shot had punched out his heart, and I knew Jonesy would still be lying there.

Doc made his way over to me and handed me a helicopter crewman’s headset. I put it on and plugged into the intercom system so we could talk.

“Nick, we can’t bring Redshirt to the hospital. As soon as they realize that he’s immune to Zombie bites that kid is going to turn into the world’s biggest guinea pig. They will keep him just healthy enough to produce blood for lab tests for the rest of his life.”

In the fight yesterday at West Point, Private First Class Redshirt, a Navajo kid who had been attached to the Zombie Killers, had gone down swinging in pile of zombies, and we had though he was lost. He showed up later, all torn to hell and bitten in several places, but still alive and uninfected. Doc had told me that he was only the third person he had ever heard of who was immune to the zombie plague, and the other two had gone missing.

“Tough on him. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

“Bullshit. If you believed that, you would be back in the real Army instead of scouting around out here.”

I knew he had me. The kid had done good and become a member of the team, and I knew what would happen once the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) got their hands on him. They would sic their pet zombies on him and keep trying to figure out why he didn’t get infected, and he would die soon enough from whatever other diseases developed in their rotting mouths.

“OK. He stays, but Mya is going to have to look after him. You, me and Ahmed are going back for Jonesy’s body tomorrow, if we can get it.”

He nodded and unplugged from the intercom. We touched down on the island as the sun rose.

Brit complained, but she had to stay. We needed her whole. And she needed serious antibiotics after her wound had opened up and she had fallen in the river. By the next night, she had a raging fever. It had finally broken, but she had been left exhausted and wrung out. Even her complaints had seemed like something she felt she had to do. She drifted off into a deep sleep and the PA at the medical tent had kicked us out. Redshirt was recuperating in another tent, away from the eyes of the medical personnel, guarded by Specialist Mya.

We set off downriver that afternoon, with the boat crew gunning the engine at full blast. I knew they felt bad for leaving us. If they hadn’t had to return to base for repairs, Jonesy and Lt. Carter would still be alive. I didn’t blame them, though; equipment broke down. It couldn’t be helped.

The military ran operations on a shoestring. When the Apocalypse happened, many of the bases and depots that held spare parts for the military had been overrun. In the few years since then, there wasn’t anyone making anything except the simple basics, like weapons and ammunition. Even our uniforms were patched and mended over and over. That and irregular maintenance (or, in most cases, no maintenance at all) had taken its toll on anything mechanical. The boats waiting for us at West Point had suffered an engine fire and an explosion, causing casualties. They had been forced to return to base, leaving us to duke it out with a horde of Zs.

The dock where we had fought as we waited for the helicopter pulled into view. Zombie bodies were scattered all over, from our rifles and the airstrikes. We pulled up to the dock and climbed out, weapons at the ready, but there was no movement in sight.

Ahmed kept watch with his sniper rifle as Doc and I searched for Jonesy’s body. He lay where he had fallen, sprawled flat on his back, iron bar still clasped in his hands. Doc unwrapped a body bag and we tipped him over into it.

“Damn, Jonesy, you stink.” My eyes were watering and I felt like throwing up. Two days in the sun and he was almost unrecognizable. At least his eyes were closed. The blood had dried black on his uniform around the hole in his heart made by Ahmed’s bullet. He had always been too big to wear body armor.

“I know, right?” said Doc. “Maybe you should take a bath every now and then, Brother.”

It was either that or bust out crying. It’s just how you deal with it sometimes. This man had been my friend, as close to me as my own brother, or closer. We shared untold danger and saved each other’s lives too many times to count, and here I was about to zip up the bag and close him off from the sunlight forever. Doc motioned me aside. “I’ll do it.”

I turned away, but I still heard the zipper as he closed it. Goodbye, Brother. We each grabbed a handle on the body bag and tried to lift. “Damn, he’s heavy” grunted Doc. Ahmed slung his rifle and came over to give us a hand, and we pulled him over to the boat. The boat crew helped us get him onboard and we headed back upriver. Not a soul or a Zombie in sight.

We buried him on the south side of Bannerman Island, just above the shoreline, so his grave got sunlight all year long. Brit stood with me and held my hand while one of the infantry sergeants, a lay preacher, spoke over the grave. He prayed for salvation of Jonesy’s soul, who apparently had died doing the Lord’s work. Brit squeezed my hand tight to keep me from interrupting him.