John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Get the Blues

The Fort itself was located at Albany Airport for use of the runway, and the center of the base was the Joint Forces HQ of the New York National Guard, a modern, two story building. The glass had mostly been replaced by sandbags and a berm had been bulldozed around, with guard towers every hundred meters or so. Impressive, until you realized how understaffed Task Force Empire really was. The towers were often not even manned in the day time, just supplemented by a roving patrol. After the local area had been cleared, no one expected a zombie horde, and Firebase Mohawk, located ten miles westward, could easily lay down an effective barrage of BB rounds. Around it had been cleared a good field of fire for three hundred meters. Crossing it was going to be a problem, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it until I came across this ditch. We had been inching our way through it for more than an hour, and we were now within a quick sprint of the berm. That last stretch was going to be a bitch, since it was just under a tower. What I was counting on was lax security and Brit. It had been more than six months since there had been any incident around the Fort, except for civilian survivors showing up at the gate every now and then. I had considered trying to disguise ourselves and talk our way onto the base, but we were too well-known. Instead, hopefully Brit was borrowing a little from the ancient Chinese military genius Sun Tzu: “All warfare is deception.”

At 0221, an orange fireball climbed up into the sky on the other side of the Airfield, followed by a thump that I felt in ground before I heard it. Alarms started wailing, and I knew that attention would be drawn there for the next twenty minutes or so. We waited past that time for everything to calm down. After an hour, the adrenaline from the explosion wore off and hopefully people got sleepy.

At 0325, we crawled slowly down the drainage ditch to where it ran up to the berm. I heard voices in the tower above us. Brit had come over to the base of the tower and was talking to the Fobbits on guard duty. Most likely, one was asleep at this time, worn out by trying to watch in the direction of the explosion, and the other was distracted by Brit. More likely, there was only one on duty anyway. We snipped our way through the wire, threw a blanket over the concertina wire and rolled over the berm, Doc pulling the blanket after him. We crawled under a tent, one I knew contained spare supplies and had no one in it. After fifteen minutes or so, Brit joined us.

I wrapped her in a bear hug and started to squeeze. Damn, she felt good!

“Whoa, ow, ow, calm down there, Idiot! Surgery, gunshot, hellloooo!” I put her carefully down and kissed her full on the lips. She touched my unshaven face gently, then pushed me away and punched me as hard as she could in the gut, right under the plate of my body armor. I doubled over, and gasped out, “What the hell was that for?”

“For letting me get shot, you stupid ass. How does it fraking feel, huh?” The guys were laughing as I tried to catch my breath. “Did you like my little diversion? Rubber band around a grenade, put it inside a can of diesel fuel earlier today. Not bad timing wise, if I do say so myself.”

“What did you say to get the tower guard’s attention?”

“I told him I had the hots for him and made a date for when he gets off shift in the morning. ’Cause, you know, I’m EASY! Hell, any piece of ass in this place could wrap this whole camp around her finger.”

After I recovered, we made our way casually through the tents to the Officers’ trailer park. No one paid attention to us in the dark. Doc and Ahmed had moved off to the motor pool to get us some transportation, and I expected them along any minute.

We stopped around the corner from the Jackasses’ trailer, and ducked down as a figure in PT uniform and shower shoes came down the graveled walk, carrying a rifle and a towel and shining a flashlight on the ground in front of him. As he passed us, Jonesy’s arm shot out and hit him on the side of the head, knocking the figure out cold. Our old friend Sergeant Major Peters.

“Pray for the right things, and the Lord will hear you!” rumbled Jonesy, and he quickly stripped the SGM and left him lying butt-naked on the ground, hog-tied with duct tape over his mouth. “Thank you, Jesus, for happenstance! I hope the mosquitos eat him alive.”

“Are you done messing around?” I asked. Jonesy laughed again. “After you, Nick.”

“Boys and their stupid games,” muttered Brit, but she spit on the still-unconscious figure anyway, and kicked him once, hard, with her combat boot, in the ribs.

We turned the corner, made sure the coast was clear, and were about to kick the door in when it opened. A young female soldier stepped out, kissed the Colonel, then walked away. I heard Brit mutter “rank climber” under her breath. The Colonel stood in the doorway watching her go, scratching himself. He went to shut the door, but a huge hand clad in a combat glove stopped it.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed, and then my arm wrapped around his neck in a sleeper hold. I choked him until he stopped struggling, and we taped his mouth, zip tied his hands and feet and threw an empty sandbag over his head. As we finished, Ahmed pulled up in a battered HUMVEE. We slung jackass into the back, hid him under some tarps, and piled in.

At the front gate, we stopped for them to raise the barrier. No one ever stopped anyone leaving the base. The Sergeant of the Guard, an E-6 I knew pretty well, came over to me.

“Damn, Nick, I thought you guys were dead! Came by to pick up Brit, huh? Glad she’s out of the hospital.”

“As Mark Twain once said, reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated. We’re on our way south, start scouting for the push downriver.”

“Well, you guys be safe out there. Shoot ‘em in the head!”

“Always do, Sarge, always do!” Ahmed gunned the engine, Jonesy spun the turret around to face forward, and we rolled out the gate.

We threaded our way down Route 7, swerving carefully around the wrecked cars. This stretch wasn’t too bad, since it ran from one populated area to another. No one was trying to get between those. The traffic jams were bad just outside the small towns, when people realized that the locals weren’t going to let them in or there was no gas for sale. Come into a valley in front of a small town and there would be a pile up like you wouldn’t believe. Many of the cars would have bullet holes in them too, where they tried to run the barricades the locals had set up. 90% of the time they had to deal with so many refuges that the locals ran out of ammo, and they couldn’t defend themselves when a horde of Zombies came through. If they did admit refugees, they quickly overwhelmed the resources of the town; anarchy set in with the same result. Only here or there were towns and villages able to put up a coherent defense and hold out, and even then many times starvation did them in, a year later. Twelve months after the plague started, ninety percent of the east coast was either infected or dead from violence and starvation.

We reached the bridge over the Hudson where the highway turns into Hoosick Street, just as the sun was rising in the East. The sky was light above the hills, but down in the river valley, it was still covered in shadows. As we pulled up to the barricade that stretched across the bridge, Jonesy let loose with a burst from the 240B machine gun in the turret to call the Zombies, aiming it out over the water. The gunshots echoed through the dead city on either side of the river, and immediately on the other side of the barrier the Zombie moan started, first one, then more as they started to stumble toward the sound of the shots. All along the Hudson, all the way down the river to Newburgh, Army Engineers had built a barricade across each bridge, a ten foot high barrier that stretched across the width of the bridge. There was a lockable, heavy wooden gate that could be opened to let vehicles through, and a ladder on either side that would allow people to climb up and over. Sensors and cameras were embedded in the barrier to let the troops in the Operations center know if anyone was passing through. These walls were put up to keep the Zombies on the east side of the Hudson from crossing over to the west side and re-contaminating any cleared areas. The same was true for the bridges over the Mohawk River and just about any other major bridge. It was SOP for the Army when they went in to clear an area. Either build it, or blow it, and isolate an area. Zombies can cross water, but don’t like to, so rivers made a great barrier to them.