John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Get the Blues

We were already sitting in a hide site across the canal from the prison, waiting for daylight. Doc, Ahmed and Jonesy were sleeping while Jacob and I kept watch. As the light slowly filtered into the east, we all woke for stand-to, making sure no one had sneaked up on us in the night, no Zs had stumbled into our area. We hadn’t seen one since the day before; apparently our friends across the canal had been doing a pretty good job of clearing them out.

Every half hour I called Valkyrie to check on Brit. Late in the morning Major McHale came on the horn.

"Lost Boys 6, this is Valkyrie 6, your 5 element is out of surgery. Doing OK, sedated. Will fill you in tomorrow, over."

I said a silent prayer of relief and tapped my head with the hand mike while letting out my breath. Then I gave a thumbs-up to the rest of team. They all grinned back at me.

Feeling like I had just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, I went back to watching the prison.

"Are you crying, Nick?"

"Fuck you, Jonesy."

“You seem to be a little stressed, Nick. Why you be cursing so much?”

“”I got your stress right here. I’ll be fine once we get to shoot someone.”

As I watched through my binos, I saw a truck which had been parked across the front gate of the prison rumble to life and roll back across. An army LMTV, the cab chopped off and armor plate welded across the front, pulled out and drove off down the road to the county prison. In the back were a group of women, dressed in orange prison jumpsuits. They stopped midway and the women, about a dozen, climbed off the back. One man with a shotgun jumped down from the remains of the cab. They headed to a field that was showing some corn sprouting up through the rows and started pulling weeds. The truck continued down to the county prison and returned with two dozen more men and women. They looked like concentration camp survivors, all skin and bones. The original group of women looked almost healthy in comparison. I counted a total of six guards, armed with shotguns, rifles, and M-16s. As I watched, one of them occasionally whipped one of the workers. The truck returned to the county jail and started making trips to the backside of the prison. I counted five trips before the truck returned to the prison.

I handed the binos to Doc. He studied the scene for several minutes.

“Tell me what you think, Doc.”

“OK, the first group of women you saw are the party girls. Either voluntary or not. Fed better, not whipped so often. The others are slaves and meat.”

“Agreed. I counted three dozen civilians in the close field and 5 truckloads to the back fields. Make that a total of around a hundred thirty or so. Figure they have a back entrance to let the guards out to the back fields. Same number of guards per civilians, makes it around thirty guards out back. No idea how many are in the prison itself but you have to figure at least double that number. So, figure maybe a hundred cannibals.”

“Anti-American Forces.”

He snorted. “Whatever. Time to settle in and watch for a few hours. Later today we can head over and check out the county jail. Obviously being used as a slave pen. What I can’t figure out is they should be all stirred up by the helicopters and the gun fire yesterday, yet here they are, acting like nothing happened. ”

“I don’t know. Then again, tough as these guys might be locally, the heavy-duty shit might be outside their experience and they probably don’t know what to do other than go on about their business.”

“Well, either way, as long as they sit still and don’t unass the place. I assume patrols go missing on a regular basis.”

We took turns watching and noting routines. The only break in the boredom was when a zombie stumbled from the tree line next to the field. I watched it run at the workers, who kept right on working. I wondered why they didn’t break and run, or why the guard didn’t shoot it. The Zombie grabbed the nearest worker, who started to fight. I watched the guards gather around the fight. The man finally went down under the zombie. I could faintly hear him screaming. One of the guards finally clubbed the zombie on the back of its head when it started to stand up from chewing on its victim.

As I watched this drama, I caught some movement at the edge of the field. One of the healthier-looking women was running for the woods. The guards turned at a yell from another prisoner and shot her down as she ran. Then they started whipping the other prisoners.

“Nice people.” I commented to Doc. He grunted an affirmation, then took his turn at the binos while I ate some lunch.

In the evening, we moved across the bridge and got as close as we could to the county prison. Unlike the state prison, with thirty foot high concrete walls, the county jail was surrounded by chain link and razor wire. Two guards sat in towers, and around the fence were piles of skeletons. It looked like a Z swarm had broken itself on the fence a while ago. I wondered who had won that one.

The state prison was surrounded by 20’ high concrete walls. Guards stood in each of the towers. As I watched in the night vision scope, the guard in the closest tower was joined by another figure, and the two of them started having sex right there in the tower. I’ll give him credit for enthusiasm but it meant their security was shit.

I wrote all this up and shot it back to TF Empire with pictures. The return e-mail came back quickly.

FROM: S-3@TFEMPIRE.MIDATLCOM.MIL

TO: LOSTBOYS6@ TFEMPIRE.MIDATLCOM.MIL

RE: FRAGO 16 OPORDER 17-034 OPERATION HAWKEYE

Nick, move back and find a place to watch the fireworks. Stand by to provide observed corrections to fire support if necessary. Hope you enjoy the show.

MAJOR JOHN FLYNN

S-3, TF EMPIRE

“Nick, Empire Six is on the horn. He wants a prisoner to interrogate.”

“Tell him I said to piss off.”

“Empire Six, this is Last Boys Three, our six element says to piss off, over.”

I grabbed the hand mike from Doc. “You asshole.” He laughed and told me he hadn’t transmitted. Everybody is a frigging joker.

Turns out before he launched this op, Colonel Jackass wanted us to interrogate a prisoner. We had given him a pretty good writeup of the situation. However, he didn’t want to “launch on unconfirmed Intel ”. His words. My words were “you big puss,” but I wasn’t stupid. I was going to deal with him in my own time. I gave him the “Roger that” and started to plan.

We still had two hours of darkness left. I didn’t like the idea of snatching a prisoner. It was dangerous, and I couldn’t figure out how we were going to do it. Everyone was locked up tight in the jails or guarded in the fields. We had already seen that the guards didn’t go anywhere alone, even when taking a dump, when they were outside the prison. They only slacked off when they were behind the walls. Getting one alive would be next to impossible. At the least, it would involve some kind of fight, which would draw attention from even more guards. As far as just “taking someone down” it’s not like the movies at all. You don’t just sneak up on someone, tap them on the head, drag them away and then wake them up with a gentle slap on the face. More likely than not, if you hit someone hard enough to knock them out, you are going to fracture their skull or at least cause a major concussion. Which, all and all, makes for a useless prisoner. Since they never travelled alone outside the prison, we would have to kill one to snatch the other. That would blow the element of surprise for any attack tonight.