Winter Apocalypse: Zombie Crusade V (7 page)

The hunters came in blind, and every soldier was easily able to pick their initial targets and bury cold steel in flesh-eater skulls. This first blood-letting evened the odds, and then the real contest began. A few months earlier the struggle would have been one sided and quickly finished by the humans, but the hunters had continued to evolve as they consumed more protein and could now actually think as they approached their prey. Most of the creatures who’d survived this long knew how to use their brains as well as brawn during a fight against armed people. Many of the beasts had learned how to control their instinctive fury when they encountered soldiers, and they had adapted their tactics after gaining, and surviving, combat experience against tough survivors.

Carter and some of the other leaders argued that the stupid hunters were all dead now, and survival of the fittest had winnowed the infected population to the point where only the cautious still lived. When steel met beast, however, nobody had time to try to figure out if the increasing deadliness of the hunters was due to natural selection or cognitive improvement; the soldiers still had to fight for their lives against lethal monsters who wanted to eat them.

One tactic still worked for the troops against the flesh-eaters, a formation as ancient as civilization itself: the phalanx. The language describing the practice had changed over the millennia of human experience, but the concept remained the same: armored soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder with their flanks protected. Almost six months following the outbreak, the Indiana and Utah fighters had used the formation so often they moved into position without conscious thought. Some of the warriors had lost their spears, the tips still stuck in the quivering corpses of the first wave of attackers. But either swords, axes, or war-hammers were carried by everyone as back-up or close-quarter weapons, so the now tightly-packed human line continued to bristle with gleaming steel as the hunters renewed their assault.

The flesh-eaters continued to emerge from the blowing snow, now howling as they realized that they were in close proximity to humans, unable to contain their excitement at the prospect of quickly obtaining their favorite food. Protein was protein to the infected, and they’d eat a rat as hungrily as they’d devour a deer or cow. But when the virus had forced their bodies to mutate, a desire for human flesh seemed to become hard-wired into their DNA. The monsters didn’t howl when they saw other animals; the hellish sound was reserved only for people. The soldiers knew that the howls would alert nearby hunters, and soon they’d be facing even more of the creatures. Still, all they could do was fight and hope that Ted Simmons could hear all the commotion, and pray that he had a plan.      

The hard-bitten engineer had indeed heard the noises that he knew by experience would bring more flesh-eaters to the scene. He also realized that he was hearing only a handful of howls so there was still a chance of reaching the train before the area was overrun. The remaining parents and many of the children were armed and armored to at least some degree, so Ted decided to go for the boxcars rather than trying to return to the settlement and putting all of these people into canoes and other small boats while under attack. The veteran knew his decision carried the potential for disaster, but sometimes there just wasn’t a good choice available.

He shouted out over the storm, “Weapons in hand and move at a steady walk to the cars. No panic! We still have time to get aboard the train so keep your wits and get your kids on those boxcars.”

Of course there was some panic, the same men and women who’d calmly stood in the line against thousands of infected earlier in the war now reacted quite differently when their children were in imminent danger. The crowd’s steady walk almost immediately turned into a frenzied rush forward as everyone was determined to reach the relative safety of the small train as quickly as possible. That soon led what was becoming a frightened mob up against the back of the line fighting off the last of the hunters, where they pushed their way through the troops and fell on the remaining monsters with a mindless rage before sliding open the doors to the boxcars.

One soldier was dead with a broken neck, an increasingly common injury as the hunters evolved into creatures determined to kill with their ever-strengthening arms and hands before employing their teeth. The rest of the stout warriors divided up into groups of three and moved to guard the gaps between the cars sitting on the rails, arriving just in time to meet several packs of flesh-eaters arriving at the site in response to the howls they’d managed to hear over the storm. Simmons was thankful that the wind had probably muffled the monsters’ calls before they reached the horde attacking the settlement, but worried that the refugees were still going to run out of time as he locked himself in the locomotive and began firing up the engine.

Miraculously, no children were lost in all the chaos surrounding the confused rush for the train, but one parent was dragged under the cars and pulled into the blizzard, where his screams continued for several long minutes before being abruptly cut off. The fighters guarding the gaps also suffered another casualty when one of the Utah soldiers was grabbed by a huge hunter and smashed into the couplings. The man’s arm was rendered useless, probably pulled from its socket at the shoulder, but his comrades were able to kill the injured fighter’s attacker and push their friend into one of the boxcars as the last of the civilians were boarding. Finally, the people guarding the sliding doors shouted for the soldiers to join them, after which everyone sat inside the crowded cars for twenty minutes listening to frustrated hunters howl. The raging creatures beat on the sides of the train until the locomotive finally began to pull out of town. At the loss of two adult fighters killed and another wounded, the children of Fort Wayne had escaped the beleaguered settlement.

In the months following the Battle of the Castle, Jack’s forces had systematically cleared the surrounding area for miles in every direction. As houses became available following the military sweeps, families and friends were billeted according to their needs and abilities. Basically, they had to be able to farm and fight. They also had to be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Trudy operated the ranch where Jack had established a training school for horses and horseback riding. Most of the human recruits were teens and promising adolescents who Jack hoped would one day become the foundation of an armored cavalry force. Now, Trudy sent Jade and Tyler out to open all of the stalls and gates, determined to provide her beloved animals with an escape route if hunters did show up here. They also threw down all the hay from the mow and sliced open the bales. By the time that task was completed, all of the bug-out-bags were loaded into the four-wheelers and everyone was ready to leave.

Christy drove the lead vehicle, a huge pick-up with a crew cab and a powerful winch. Trudy rode shotgun while Tyler covered the driver’s side from the rear. Both passengers carried enough ammo to start a small war. Jenny Alberts, along with her adopted sister, Addison, were packed into the rest of the back seat. Vickie drove the second truck, with Sal providing firepower from the front while Jade rode in the back with the kids. Manny Martinez had won the battle with the Alberts girls over who got to hold Chewy during the ride, and the brave little Beagle added his powerful nose to the group’s anti-hunter measures by sticking it out of the small opening Manny left in the window.

As the tiny convoy pulled out of the driveway it was immediately obvious that the trip would take longer than they’d first thought. Drifts on the north-south roads were already over a foot high. The snow and wind continued their unabated assault on the area, showing no signs of slowing any time soon. Christy kept their speed at just under thirty miles per hour, worried much more about sliding than getting stuck in their over-sized four-wheelers. They made slightly better time after reaching Highway 30 leading into the north side of Fort Wayne from the west, but in their relief at finally being off the country roads nobody noticed the Blackhawk fly overhead through the gale as they reached the city-limits.

CHAPTER 7

The large yacht was nearly silent as it glided across southern Lake Huron, but music from Carolyn’s boom-box provided an interesting soundtrack to the otherwise serene atmosphere.

Michael leaned over a small railing and called over to where Carolyn was reclining on a deck chair, bundled up for the chilly morning. “Hey—can you turn that thing off? The eighties called and they want their music back.” He didn’t notice Robbie sneaking up behind him, and he jumped when his friend slapped him on the back and drummed out a beat on his shoulders in unison with the song that was already giving Michael a headache.
Dum dum dum da da dum dum, Dum dum dum da da dum dum . . .

“Ice, ice baby,” Robbie cheerfully shouted to Carolyn. He turned to Michael with a mischievous grin, “Don’t you think it’s the perfect song for this gorgeous November morning? It actually has a special meaning for Carolyn and me; sometimes, when we’re feeling frisky—”

“Stop! It’s bad enough that I’m going to have that damn song stuck in my head for the rest of the day; I don’t want to associate it with your love life, too.” Michael looked over at Carolyn and squinted in disbelief. “Good lord, what is she doing?”

  Carolyn was slowly rotating her hips while using her knees to lower herself to the ground, then upright, to the ground, then upright . . . Robbie gave her an appreciative thumbs-up before answering the question. “I call it dancing, but she says it’s her exercise routine. I guess she used to be pretty heavy, before we met, and now she really focuses on staying in shape. That’s her mix tape we’re listening to.”

Michael shook his head, looked out to the horizon, and muttered under his breath. “Considering what Katie said she paid for those boobs, I guess she’s just protecting her investment.”

Robbie held a hand up to his ear to indicate that he hadn’t heard Michael’s remark. “Huh?”

“Never mind, lover boy. Feel free to keep Carolyn company for a while; I figure we’ve got a good two hours till we reach our rendezvous point.”

Father O’Brien shivered as he leaned against the railing on the deck. He’d spent years as a fisherman and freighter crewman before tragedy had struck his life and he’d turned to the priesthood. No Great Lakes veteran wanted to be on the open water in November, a month infamous for the number of shipwrecks produced by the unpredictable weather. He’d personally known four members of the Edmund Fitzgerald before it sank in a vicious storm on Lake Superior nearly forty years earlier. Needless to say, when he finally led his own tiny crew into the relative protection of the Detroit River, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. The ice forming in the marinas and shallows along the shoreline was disturbing, as was the ominous silence as they passed the scorched and abandoned skyscrapers of the Motor City. This weather was more like winter than fall, and he suspected that most of Lake Erie would be covered in ice by Christmas. At his age he didn’t see too many new things, but a frozen Erie in December would certainly qualify as new.

“One of those youngsters should make us a hot meal,” Bruce called from the cabin.

Before O’Brien could respond, he heard rattling and laughter from the cabin. Brittany stuck her head out of one of the small cabin windows. “Hey, Father, we have a bunch of hot oatmeal in here. If Bruce would have turned around he’d have noticed his hot meal waiting for him. Did you know he’s hard of hearing?”

“Damn fools almost gave me a heart attack,” Bruce protested from below.

Father O’Brien joined his crew, and Roberto asked him why they couldn’t pick up the pace. “This boat can go a lot faster; why don’t we step it up?”

“We’re in no hurry, son. We left when we did in case we run into any trouble, there’s no reason to get to our rendezvous point early and just sit around and wait. It’s smarter to go slow, conserve fuel, and enjoy the great weather.”

Bruce grunted. “If you kids get bored you can take a nice swim.”

“I’d rather play some poker,” Brittany retorted. She knew that Bruce fancied himself an expert poker player. “Who’s in?”

“You three play poker,” Father O’Brien replied. “I’d like to sit in the comfy chair and play captain for a while.”

Time passed uneventfully, and after winning all the change on the table, Bruce wandered off for a mid-day nap. As they cleared the river and headed out into Lake St. Clair, O’Brien noticed that the sun was past its zenith, and he hoped they’d be able to reach the docks in Sarnia before nightfall—really just late afternoon this time of year. The decision had been made to meet in darkness in the hope of avoiding the attention of infected, or simply unfriendly humans. The crew had two sets of NVGs to share, and the cabin was full of modern electronics designed to help a pilot navigate the Great Lakes waterways at night. St. Clair wasn’t a large body of water compared to the surrounding inland seas, but once again, Father O’Brien was happy to complete the open-water stretch and enter the southern mouth of the river that would take them to the rendezvous point.

They were encountering more and more ice as they made their way north, and Brittany had a question concerning the record cold they were experiencing. “Hey, Father, we know the infected don’t like water; do they like ice?”

The once-portly priest chuckled. “I hope not. David and Luke have discussed the possibility of freezing temperatures killing the monsters; they don’t exactly wear clothing to protect themselves from the elements.”

Brittany frowned, so O’Brien asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Well,” she began, “if the hunters are active in the winter, what’s to stop them from just walking over the ice?”

By the time they reached the agreed-upon location in Sarnia, it was late afternoon and the sun was descending toward the Michigan shoreline. Bruce was back at the helm, and Father O’Brien still had no answer for Brittany’s question; it was just one more thing survivors were going to have to worry about as what was expected to be a record-cold winter set in. Another mystery was the vintage ferry they’d passed in the river an hour earlier. The huge boat had been just floating as they’d overtaken it in the shipping channel, and the sounds of infected howling and moaning emanated from the otherwise silent vessel. That had led to all kinds of speculation by the crew.

Roberto’s theory seemed to make the most sense. “I’m tellin’ ya, when the outbreak began, a bunch of rich folks on Grosse Isle all packed onto that old-school ferry and tried to escape to the north. Somebody was already infected, and now there’s a boat full of flesh-eaters floating toward Lake Huron.”

“Oh yeah,” Brittany had argued, “so the ferry just somehow managed to float across Lake St. Clair and into the river without running aground somewhere?”

“Hey, it’s a possibility. How else can you explain it?”

Brittany furrowed her brow. “I don’t know, but there’s something really weird about the whole thing.”

Regardless of the boat’s origins or contents, O’Brien needed to concentrate as they navigated the entrance to the marina in Sarnia. The mouth of the channel wasn’t particularly wide, but the stretch of open, deep water between the peninsula and the mainland was nearly a quarter mile in length. A number of heavy-duty quays jutted out from the shore, obviously used to dock large freighters. Marilyn had told them to drop anchor near one of the piers, or even tie up to one of them if the place seemed clear of infected. Father O’Brien did just that after he’d traveled over halfway down the channel, then he got on the radio to see if he could raise the Canadian delegation.

After a few tries, he heard Marilyn’s voice ring out loud and clear. “Hey there, Father, ready for that confession yet?”

He laughed aloud at their running joke. “Think you could handle the penance?”

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t be too hard on me.”

“Well, you could start by coming into the marina.”

“We can see the shore from where we are; let me check with Michael, I mean, Mayor.”

Father O’Brien smiled to himself at the mention of Mayor’s real name, then he remembered the enthusiasm in Christy’s voice when she talked about her cousin who lived on an island in Lake Huron.  His name was Michael too, Michael Carboni. O’Brien was trying to remember what else Christy had told him when Marilyn came back on the air.

“My fearless captain says we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Sounds good. We’re near the end of the main channel, past the big boats, tied up to the third standard pier on the right. It’s a good spot if we decide to do a little salvaging in the daylight, and we’re setting up some trip wires on shore to alert us if any unexpected visitors head our way. If it’s not safe to dock, we’ll let you know.”

“Perfect—see you soon.”

The two captured civilians from a small community not far from Windsor really had no experience piloting old commercial ferries,  but they’d known enough about general ship operations to get the vessel away from the dock in Marine City and headed toward the Canadian shore of Lake Huron. They’d watched a crane load several large containers filled with moaning, flesh-eating monsters before six well-armed soldiers directed them to what would have been a high-tech wheelhouse in the 1970s. After not even an hour on the water, things had begun to go terribly wrong.

The so-called American Army soldiers had double checked the twist locks on the freight containers when they’d secured them in the cargo hold, but it never occurred to anyone to check the integrity of the sides of the oversized transport trailers.  At some point in its history, potential thieves had cut most of the way through the side of one of the semi-trailers, and pressure from the overcrowded mob of monsters caused a pre-cut plate to give way. Over two hundred creatures had spilled out from the opening. When one of Barnes’ not-too-bright young soldiers opened the cargo hatch to investigate the noise, he was greeted with hungry moans and outstretched arms. The inexperienced recruit managed to fire several ineffective shots before he was pulled into a mob of snarling flesh-eaters.

Everyone on board heard the shots ring out, but the hum of the ship’s twin diesel engines muffled the sound of the infected as they escaped from their confinement in search of additional food. The alleged Army sergeant who seemed to be in charge kept his gun trained on the frightened pilots as he ordered the other two soldiers in the wheelhouse to go investigate the situation. After hearing distant screams and more gunfire, the lone officer locked the door and ordered the civilians to cut the engines. When one of the pilots questioned the wisdom of shutting off the engines and slowing down the voyage, he was pistol-whipped in reply. The injured man’s counterpart accommodated the officer and spared his friend further harm for the moment.       

Right on time, Father O’Brien watched the Canadian boat approach through the growing darkness. He and Brittany had NVGs on, and they both could see who they assumed was Rocky standing at the bow to greet them. He was also wearing some sort of night-vision, and he waved when he noticed the two Americans watching him. Roberto had just returned from setting up the trip wire alarms and now deftly grabbed the rope Marilyn tossed to him. He tied the trim yacht to one of the nearby pylons as O’Brien scurried down to the pier to hold out a welcoming hand to the lovely young woman he’d grown so fond of over the past few weeks. She accepted the old priest’s help with no hesitation and immediately enveloped him in an enthusiastic embrace. Rocky followed his girlfriend ashore, while the captain hung back in the cabin with a gun in his hand.

As soon as Father O’Brien could maneuver himself free of the bear hug, he pulled back and happily exclaimed, “Hello, Marilyn!”

She laughed the same infectious laugh that had warmed the old man’s heart over the radio. “My name is Carolyn, Father, and it’s my pleasure to finally meet you.”

O’Brien was momentarily distracted by the Canadian beauty’s exuberance and familiarity, but he recovered quickly enough to hold out his hand to Rocky.  “You, sir, are a lucky man.”

“I know it, Father. And for the record, my name is Robbie, but as nicknames go I can live with Rocky if that’s how you think of me.”

Brittany called out from the boat, “We’ve got our cabin blacked out if you’d like to come inside for some coffee.”

Carolyn raised her eyebrows, and O’Brien explained. “She just means that the lights are off or the windows are blacked out so we won’t be visible to anybody or anything that looks this way. You all should do the same.”

Robbie nodded. “I think we’re on the same page. I’m going to see if I can fetch our so-called Mayor.” He looked at Carolyn to gauge her comfort level—he hadn’t lost sight of the fact that they really didn’t know these people.

Carolyn patted Robbie’s arm reassuringly. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Father O’Brien alone for a minute anyway.” She smiled and gave her boyfriend a playful push toward their yacht. “Try to convince Michael to be friendly for a change.”

The priest held out his arm to Carolyn and led her aboard his boat. He told Brittany to stay on deck and watch for the other two Canadians. “When you see them, be a good hostess and direct them this way. And tell Roberto to let us know if he sees or hears anything at all.” He turned to Carolyn.  “I’ll introduce you to our official pilot, Bruce Bowen, inside. That was Brittany, a remarkable young lady—she can do just about anything. Roberto is on guard duty—he’s amazing as well. I’ve been truly blessed to have their support.”