Captain Freedom took three steps and leaped into the air. Thirty-five feet from pretty much standing still, the magnificent bastard. I had to run more, but I ended up landing on the semi just after him. The rest of Eleven was right behind me.
A sea of dead things. I’d read that phrase in a few reports. Once in a book someone loaned me at the start of the outbreaks, some horror-sci-fi thing about the Grim Reaper hunting zombies. It always struck me as a crap phrase. Something people said to avoid being exact. I’d dealt with hundreds of soldiers in boot camp and never had trouble keeping them separate. I’d been at ceremonies with over two thousand men and women present and it never seemed like a sea.
There was a frigging ocean of dead things on the other side of the pileup. It’s one thing to read reports about the walking dead, to hear how many of them there were. Seeing it is like getting dropped in ice water. Seven, maybe eight thousand exes. Maybe more. After one of the first briefings we attended together, Freedom told me the human mind can’t comprehend numbers over one hundred. As the previous paragraph might indicate, at the time I thought it was bullcrap. Now I’m not so sure.
They’d been drawn this way by the sound of our engines and our weapons, stumbling in our direction for an hour now from all over the city. The semi across the road was acting like a floodgate. They just piled up against it, stretching back a mile down the double-wide road. I couldn’t see pavement anywhere. The chattering from their teeth was like static. It went on and on and you knew it wasn’t ever going to end. It just hung in the air like flies over garbage.
The ones closest to the semi saw us and surged forward. They clawed at the sides of the box. Most of them still looked like people. I saw one that looked like it’d been set on fire. I couldn’t tell if it’d been a man or a woman. Another one looked like its arm had been shot off. There was a woman with dark hair like my sister. Her jaw had been blown off. There were strings of muscle and skin hanging off her upper teeth. The strings twitched as the dead woman tried to clack her missing teeth together.
“Screw me,” Taylor said again. “Screw me.”
“Shut it right now, specialist,” I snapped.
“Yes, sir.” He stopped making noise but his lips kept moving.
Right there. Taylor was an arrogant jackass but he knew to keep his mouth shut when told to. Seeing all these things was throwing him. Heck, it was throwing me. I should’ve said something.
A message came in from Twelve. Enough of the exes were making it around the pile of cars that they needed to take action. Freedom gave the word and I relayed. There was a roar as Twelve’s Bravos cut down the dead things. Section Thirty-one joined in a moment later.
It was gas on a fire. More exes started staggering toward the sound. By the time the echo of the gunshots faded another three dozen, easy, had made it through the maze of cars. They were finding their way just by raw numbers.
“Wait here,” said Freedom.
A few quick steps along the roof of the semi and he launched himself over to the roof of the Circle K, another five or ten feet up. Some of the exes in the crowd shifted to follow him through the air. They clawed the front of the store. One of them fell through a broken window into the building.
The captain got his bearings before looking east with a pair of binoculars. Looked at the church and the homes about three-quarters of a mile down the road. The road we couldn’t even see under all the exes. He shook his head. He knew what I knew. Even if every single round in every weapon we had took out a zombie, we didn’t have enough. Not enough ammo. Not enough time to use it if we had it.
I looked at my watch. It was eleven-hundred hours on the nose. I knew right then we weren’t going to be reaching those possible survivors on the south side of the city. They were going to have to hold out for a few more days.
Credit where credit’s due, like I said before, the captain’s got a brain in that head of his. Some officers will bury their soldiers rather than admit they need to change tactics. Not many, but enough of them. Freedom’s willing to toss a plan on the spot if common sense tells him things have to be done different.
I’ll also go on record and say he made the right call. If anyone reading this has any doubts, Captain Freedom made a difficult choice, but the only viable one. I would’ve made the same one if I’d been in command.
He dropped back down onto the semi. We all felt the roof tremble. He was a big guy. “First Sergeant Paine,” he told me, “let’s fall back and regroup with the transport. Tell Twenty-two and Thirty-one to hold and give us cover until we’re back on the ground and clear of this traffic jam. Everyone else moves now.”
“Yes sir,” I said. I sent the order down the lines and got back a drumroll of confirmations. Across the intersection Sergeant Pierce with Twenty-two gestured his understanding and his team’s readiness.
The exes were thick around the semi-trailer now. They were flowing between the cars, like water finding the path of least resistance. The bodies Twenty-one had dropped to get up here were being mashed under hundreds of stumbling feet. The captain could’ve jumped clear to safety, but no way the rest of us could.
“The cars,” he said. “Don’t jump for the ground, jump for the tops of the cars. It’s too high up for them to reach us.” He pointed out a path, from an SUV to a battered station wagon to a minivan to another minivan to another SUV to a shiny Lexus and hitting the pavement right near section Twenty-two. “Once we go, we go as fast as we can. Don’t stop or they’ll have time to grab you and overwhelm you.”
Again, training kicks in. Discussing tactics right in front of the enemy in a loud voice. It feels wrong. It’s hard to take it seriously.
“Section Twenty-one then Eleven,” I told them. “You heard the captain. Hop, skip, and a jump. Line up and make it snappy.”
Another burst of gunfire from the ground. Section Thirty-one had a steady stream of exes coming at them from two directions. Their support section of Real Men moved in and laid down more fire. Some of the dead things shifted course for the sound. Most of them kept heading for Twenty-two and the sections falling back.
Hayes, Polk, and Taylor moved bang, bang, bang. SUV, station wagon, minivan, minivan, SUV, Lexus. All three were safe and some of the exes were still raising their arms. Too slow to get them, too slow to shift targets. Sergeant Harrison gave them a moment to make sure they were clear. Then he moved.
Franklin, Truman, and Jefferson from Twenty-one were next. Truman’s foot slipped on the second SUV and he stumbled for a moment. In that moment I pictured Jefferson slamming into him from behind and both of them falling down into a crowd of exes. I don’t think I was the only one picturing it. Truman went with it, though. Threw himself forward again with the stumble. He pretty much hit the Lexus on all fours and pushed himself off as hard and fast as he could. Shoved himself back into the air with his arms. Right there, super-strength paying for itself with one life. He hit the ground by Twenty-two face first and rolled away before Jefferson landed on him. Sergeant Monroe hit the ground a few seconds later.
It left me, Captain Freedom, and Unbreakable Seventeen—Platoon Sergeant Kennedy—on top of the truck. She’s another damn fine soldier. “Ladies first,” I told her.
Her lips twisted from a scowl to a tight grin. “With all due respect,” she said, “screw you, First Sergeant.”
“Noted,” I said. “Get yourself down there.”
“Nosebleed.” I gave her a blank look. She mimed wiping her upper lip and pointed the finger at me. “You’re leaking, Top.”
My glove came back red when I wiped it across the bottom of my nose. I didn’t remember getting hit or bumping anything. Damn air’s so dry out here. I wiped it again and pointed Kennedy off the truck.
She jumped down to the first SUV. It was a little tougher for her. The exes were already gathered around the cars, already had their hands up. And there were a lot more of them making their way through the pile-up. She was fast, though. Bang, bang, bang. They reached for her. They grabbed air every time.