Jason Campagna: White Ash on Bone: A Zombie Novel

"Go, go!" he heard someone scream; it was Sulla.

Sulla had been watching Wilson, and it dawned on him the man was having a heart attack while trying to run.

Sulla charged down the hill with the riot shotgun. The others were not prepared for the charge and were slow to follow. Sulla could tell he was not going to reach Wilson in time. The four people fell on the old trooper, but it was too late. Wilson was already dead.

Their attack only lasted a few seconds, until even in their diminished capacity, they could see Wilson was no longer of value.

"Back," Sulla ordered them. They moved to embrace Sulla. He fired the shotgun at the nearest zombie. The blast knocked it over, and it rolled for a good fifteen feet down the hill.

"What in hell were you thinking Su-" one of the vets yelled, but stopped when he saw the zombie getting back up.

Oh my god, Sulla thought, and he pumped a round into the next zombie. The blast caught it dead center and blew a huge hole in its abdomen. It fell over, but kept clawing forward leaving its lower half behind it.

He aimed higher on the next attacker and pulled the trigger. The man's head blew apart in two different directions. He didn’t get back up.

Sulla's volunteers took up a line on either side of him and opened fire on the remaining ghouls. The barrage turned the zombies into chunks of flesh.

"Cease fire," Sulla ordered. One of the creature's head lay intact, decapitated from the body. Sulla watched its eyes track him as he moved closer to it.

"Do you guys see this shit?" Sulla asked the group standing around him.

"I’m seeing it," one of the dealership salesmen said. “This is fucked up."

The head of the ghoul tried to bite at Sulla as he drew near. Sulla looked at the other body parts to see them unmoving. "It's just like it's out of a mother fucking horror movie," Sulla said. "New rule, head shots only." He looked down at the moving head, "Someone bag this freak show. I imagine someone is going to win a Nobel Prize for studying this thing."

"What about officer Wilson, do you think he is going to turn into one of them?" one of the men asked.

Sulla looked at all the bodies. "All these things came up the hill injured and mauled. Wilson died just before they got him from what I saw. We won’t know for sure unless Wilson gets back up. Let’s get back to the trucks and call this into the EOC. They’re going to need to know about the head shots." He looked down the hill, half a mile away, and he saw movement on the road. Hundreds of shapes were at the bottom of the hill moving south in his direction.

"That’s a whole mess of trouble coming this way boss," one of the men said.

Sulla noticed a few of his guys were carrying rifles with mounted scopes.

Bob Owen could see Sulla regarding him, and he nodded in understanding. Even as a child Bob had been good with rifles. When his number came up in the draft, the U.S. Army also learned of Bob's exceptional skills with a rifle. Bob didn’t enjoy the killing, but he knew it helped protect the men he served with in Vietnam. Bob let his thumb caress the stock on his .308 and introduced himself to Sulla.

Sulla's plan involved fighting a delaying action in stages. Bob and a couple other guys, who were decent shots, would set up in the back of pickup trucks. The trucks would drive down the road to decrease the distance to the hoard. They would start to thin the undead on the road from the back of the trucks. Every time the dead would get close enough, they would just drive the trucks back to a safe distance.

While this was occurring, the Road Department would be setting up the biggest roadblock they could manage. A mile south of their location, Route 8 enters a big dip, where it goes over a creek. The bridge could be barricaded with the Jersey Barriers. The bridge marked the only place where the zombies heading south could be funneled and stopped.

At that point Sulla would commit every gun he could round up to hold the zombies at the bridge. If he couldn't hold, Sulla would continue to pull back in stages to the airport. Hopefully by then, help would arrive.

There were other places east and west the zombies could get across the water, but the horde coming down the road needed to be slowed down.

All the while, other volunteers would try and evacuate as many people south to Pittsburgh, or to the Butler County Airport.

Sulla sent a couple of the guys that were with him to the Airport. He wanted them to help out with securing the fenced in facility. The gates needed locked down, and Sulla wanted to make sure he had people who saw what's coming securing those gates. In the distance, Sulla heard the rotor pitch of a helicopter, and it sounded like it was headed in his direction.

###

Captain Rick Anderson, of the Pennsylvania National Guard, commanded the Reserve Center in Butler County. The unit had been deployed to Afghanistan three months ago leaving behind only a few personnel to handle logistical issues and paperwork. New recruits and soldiers rotating home, for whatever reason, would report in to the post off and on.

Captain Anderson, had completed two tours of Iraq in the regular army, and he retired to the Pennsylvania Guard unit as its senior stateside officer a month ago. With the position would come a promotion to Major, but the paperwork had not been fully processed yet.

From the post, Captain Anderson listened as the County EOC lost cohesion with emergency responders in the field. In his opinion, it was almost complete anarchy.

From what Captain Anderson could tell, the shit had really hit the fan in Butler. He expected to get a call from the Governor’s office at any moment asking him to mobilize what personnel he could to help.

The good thing about guardsmen is when emergencies happen the men just report in on their own. Many had already arrived, and were listening to the radio with Anderson.

If Anderson did get orders to move out, he would at least be at platoon strength.

The phone rang, but it didn’t come from the Governor’s office, it came from the VA hospital next door. The call came from Joe Swanson; he was an administrator at the hospital.

Joe was a portly fellow with thick black rimmed glasses. Anderson had hung out with Joey just a couple of days ago. They had gone down to one of the bars in Lyndora, and they enjoyed some brew and a couple of deep fried Twinkies. While they were there, Anderson met several of the locals who were old chums with Joe. They introduced Anderson to Joey’s official nickname, “Joey Bag of Donuts.” Ever since then, Anderson automatically thought, “Joey Bag of Donuts,” when he came across Mr. Joe Swanson.

Anderson picked up the ringing phone on his desk, “This is Captain Anderson,” he said.

“Rick, it’s Joe, we need help,” the man on the other end of the phone wheezed. “We have people tearing up the place and attacking my staff. They killed one of my security officers-,” his sentence was interrupted by gunfire in the background. “Shit, did you hear that?” Joe said.

“Joey,” Anderson said. “Get somewhere safe, we’re on our way.” The line had already gone dead.

###

The chopper Sulla heard turned out to be a news chopper for channel six. When they saw the people with municipal equipment and guns, they decided to set down the chopper and get the story. They landed right on Route 8 in front of the dealership.

A woman, followed by a cameraman, emerged from the chopper. Peggy Davil had been shocked from the images her crew had taken from the air. They had been trying to find a safe place to land in Butler for the past hour that would be close enough to the crisis to get on-location information. They had swung by the Butler County Airport to refuel and learned Penn Township had an elected official directing operations just north of the airport on Route 8.