AniZombie 3 Read online

  Bernie heard the sound of the mortar firing the second round. He stepped around a tree and saw two men standing about forty yards from him. They were beside a third who was kneeling down beside what Bernie assumed was a mortar of some sort. He realized the guards would be a threat to him, but ignored them and concentrated on putting a round through the head of the mortar man. The sniper assumed that man was the biggest threat to the safety of the people inside the refuge. He was aware of Hernando stepping up beside him as he sighted in on the man’s head and began to put pressure on the trigger. It was a difficult shot in low light conditions without a proper night vision scope. The ambient light was too low for his standard optics to be of much use. Yet, he had to try. He exhaled slowly as he made the shot.

  Hernando fired his pistol a fraction of a second after Bernie shot the man manning the mortar. He fired two rounds in rapid succession and succeeded in dropping one of the two men who had been standing beside the man at the mortar. Then Bernie’s rifle fired again and the other man fell.

  The two men from the refuge needed to wait to see if there were any other enemy troops nearby, but time was of the essence. Both knew they needed to ensure that the enemy couldn’t use the mortar again. They scrambled through the woods and almost walked into the sights of a third guard they hadn’t seen, but Bernie spotted the man and grabbed Hernando’s shoulder and pulled him back out of harm’s way as he tried to bring his rifle into position to shoot the enemy.

  The marauder guard fired first. His shot hit Bernie in the thigh and the man went down. Hernando fired two rounds in rapid succession. One hit the enemy combatant in the center of the chest. The other struck him in the head.

  “Are you okay?” Hernando asked Bernie.

  “No, I’m not okay. That guy shot me,” Bernie said indignantly.

  Hernando repressed a smile and said, “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah, I think so, but this is going to take too long,” Bernie said as he wrapped a rope around his leg to act as an emergency tourniquet. “You get that mortar and get away before more of these guys show up.”

  Hernando ignored Bernie and said, “Get up. We’ll go get it and slip away together. We can hide it in the woods. I’m not going to abandon you. I never abandoned a friend in Newport when thousands of zombies surrounded us. I’m not going to start now.”

  Bernie got to his feet and grimaced in pain. “I think it’s what they call a flesh wound,” he explained.

  “Then it did not penetrate the bone,” Hernando nodded in understanding. “That’s good. You should be fine then, unless it nicked an artery.”

  “Oh, now you just had to go and say that, didn’t you?” Bernie carped.

  Hernando smiled but instead of replying to what Bernie had just said, he responded, “I think the people in the refuge have stopped firing at us. Shall we grab the mortar and make our way to the edge of the woods to see the extent of the damage?”

  “Sure,” Bernie replied. Hernando noticed that the man walked with a pronounced limp as they moved toward the mortar.

  Hernando and Bernie were careful to ensure that all of the men were dead before they turned their attention to the mortar. They found four cartridges for the mortar beside an old rucksack. Bernie insisted that Hernando load them in the pack so he could carry it. Then Hernando grabbed the mortar, which was still hot from being used. The two men made their way to the edge of the field and studied the carnage. The second mortar had struck one of the berms. They could see men moving around. They could also see that the outer gate had been destroyed.

  “Damn, man, I think I may have gotten an artery hit like you said,” Bernie said quietly.

  Hernando turned to look at the sniper’s wounded leg and saw that his pant leg was soaked in blood, despite the tourniquet. “Then it’s time for us to go back inside the fence,” Hernando said. “Besides, the defenders could use this weapon,” he added, referring to the mortar.

  Bernie nodded reluctantly. He was afraid he hadn’t done enough for the council to grant him his freedom, but he knew Hernando was right. In his condition, he’d never be able to last through the night out in the woods. The blood would attract zombies as surely as ringing a dinner bell.

  Hernando used his flashlight to signal the southeast tower. He used the team code to communicate and hoped that one of his teammates would notice it. Jason saw the signaling and responded appropriately, thus informing Hernando that he was communicating with one of the team members. He then stepped out into the open with Bernie. He paused to illuminate first his face, and then Bernie’s. The light in the tower flashed the okay signal and the two men moved toward the gate. Both hoped that the enemy had withdrawn and were concerned that a sniper might shoot them at any moment. Hernando hadn’t been this tense since some of the bad days in Newport.

  Herb and the rest of the team met Hernando and Bernie at the inner gate. A team of four volunteers went past them to make emergency repairs to the outer gate, but soon returned and shook their heads. There wasn’t enough of the bracing left to make any such repairs work. It would require extensive labor to fix this problem.

  Bernie said, “Hey, I saw a toy truck out in the pit as we walked by it.” He then explained that he was referring to the pit made by the explosions in front of the gates.

  Jason went outside to check out the truck. He came back empty handed, but with a big smile on his face. As the men secured the gate, he walked up to Hernando. “I got it out of the pit. Please tell me you got the control for it,” he said.

  “I got everything they had at the mortar site,” Hernando stated. “It’s in the pack Bernie is wearing.”

  “I used to operate RC models,” Jason said. “It was a hobby of mine.”

  “We can discuss toys another time,” Randy said irritably.

  “That truck isn’t a toy. It’s loaded with explosives. I’m betting it was meant for one of the gates, but fell into the pit,” Jason explained. He grinned and added, “I’d like to return it to the marauders.”

  “Oh, I like the way you think,” Randy said.

  Bernie slipped the pack off his shoulders and sat it down on the ground. He swayed when he stood back up, but Hernando held him up. “We need to get you to the doctor,” he told Bernie.

  “I’d like to know if I earned my freedom,” Bernie said.

  “You did. Raman has agreed to keep an eye on you though. You’ll sort of be on probation,” Herb informed him.

  “I can live with that,” Bernie said.

  “He’s bleeding badly. I’d better take a look at that wound,” Ed said. Bernie waited stoically as the team medic examined his leg. “Oh, this isn’t so bad,” Ed said as he worked on the wound. “It would have stopped bleeding by now if the tourniquet hadn’t slipped down below the wound. It’s not a deep wound. It punched through the outer portion of your thigh about an inch deep. The entry and exit wounds are around three inches apart. He almost missed you. You’ll be fine in a day or two,” he assured Bernie. “In fact, I can patch this up for you and save you a trip to the clinic.”

  “Do it then,” Herb instructed the medic. “Doctor Fielding has his hands full with the patients who have serious wounds.”

  “You know what, this feels pretty serious to me,” Bernie said in an irritated tone of voice.

  “It’s not nearly as bad as the wound you gave him,” Jason said pointedly.

  Bernie was wise enough to stop complaining after that. Instead, he said, “Patch me up then, Ed, because those guys out there aren’t finished with us yet. Not to mention how many zombies probably heard those explosions, so before this night is through, we may need every gun we can muster.”

  “He’s right there,” Herb said, but then he turned to Ed and asked, “Are you sure he’s up to staying on duty?”

  Ed frowned as he worked to treat Bernie’s wound. “He doesn’t need to do a lot of walking, but you could put him on one of the berms where he could lie down and fight from that position.”

  “Getting up ther
e will cause your leg to hurt a lot,” Herb told Bernie. He knew that from his own experience with his recovered wound.

  “I’ll be okay once I get there though,” Bernie said. “I want to earn my freedom,” he added.

  “You’ve done that already,” Herb said.

  “Thank you, but I think I need to do more.”

  “Now that’s the Bernie I remember,” Raman Chandler said. “I’ll see to it he gets up to the top of the berm with the rest of the men when Ed is finished with him.”

  Chapter 17

  The last straw.

  Big John’s men were settling down for the night as he entered the RV after the failed attempt by Crazy Eddie to breach the defenses and wipe out the opposition on the berms. Dana took one look at his face when he entered and said, “I take it the man failed to deliver on his promises.”

  “He took out the outer gate and shelled one of the berms, but then he got himself killed. That sniper team we’ve been fighting all day got him and the men with him, but my men must have hit the sniper. One of my scouts informed me that he saw two men entering the compound after the fighting died down,” John explained.

  “So he only did half the job,” Dana said in response.

  “He died trying,” John said, defending his decision to use Crazy Eddie and his plan. Then he reminded Dana of her place in their relationship when he said, “And if you’re not careful, you could die bitching.”

  Dana realized she had prodded the tired man at the wrong time. She nodded her head in understanding and said, “It must be well past midnight by now. You’ll feel better after you get some sleep.”

  “I see you cleaned the place up a little,” he said, ignoring her comment. “That’s good.” It wasn’t an apology for what he’d said to her, but he did feel that he may have overreacted with the threat. So he was willing to be gracious and acknowledge that she had done as he had instructed, even if it didn’t look as though she’d done very much.

  “I left you a plate of food in the microwave if you’re hungry,” Dana said.

  “Good, you can go to bed now. I’ll eat and join you later. I still have to make another round of the guards and make certain everything is as it should be before I sleep.”

  “Enjoy your dinner, and be careful out there,” Dana said, and then she went to their bedroom.

  John ate the dinner Dana had prepared. It didn’t take him long to decide that she was better in the bedroom than in the kitchen. Still, he was hungry, so he ate the unpalatable food, which consisted of a large serving of macaroni and cheese that was dry and clumped together, and green beans he thought she had just dumped in his plate straight from the can. The meal was unappetizing and tasteless, but it was filling.

  After he ate, he left the RV to make his rounds. John checked with the guards and responded to the same question numerous times when they asked if it was true that some of their people had forced the sniper team to retreat back inside their compound. The guards were relieved not to have to worry about the sniper who had claimed so many of their fighters. So was John, but he didn’t let his people know how much that team had concerned him. It was better for them to believe that he had never doubted the outcome, so he just replied that it had only been a matter of time before their better training took the man out.

  He was heading back from the western side of their camp when an explosion rocked the night. The concussive force from the blast struck John with so much force that it shoved him backward several feet across the surface of the road and almost knocked him off his feet. He glanced skyward in disbelief at the fireball that rolled and boiled high in the sky for several moments before it snuffed out like a candle. It was centered above the RVs and supply trucks.

  John ran toward the center of the camp. He had to determine the extent of the losses. He could already tell that the news was going to be bad. When he came within sight of what was left of the RVs, he stopped and stared in shock. He saw the twisted remnants of the small military fuel tanker that had been sitting near the RVs and understood what had happened. The tanker had exploded, taking several of the RVs and nearby tents with it.

  At first, John assumed that the enemy had done it somehow, but then he rethought that opinion. To this point, they had only used explosives in the defense of their compound, not counting the grenade the sniper team had tossed at them. He didn’t believe it was another grenade attack, because according to reports from his people, the sniper and his partner had been forced back inside the refuge. Therefore, he thought it likely that the explosion may have been an accident caused by a fuel leak that a stray spark had ignited.

  Little did John know that at that very moment, back in the refuge, Jason was being congratulated on the superb job he had done on delivering a crippling blow to the enemy. “You can talk about toys to me anytime you like,” Randy said happily. He was making sport of his earlier complaint to Jason. “Next time, I’ll hear you out before commenting,” he promised.

  “Thanks, but I didn’t mind. I knew you just didn’t understand where I was going with that conversation,” Jason said.

  “From the looks of the fireball, I’d say you hit them hard,” Herb observed. “Maybe now it’s time for us to make that attack run I’ve been putting off since this started. It may not take much more to get them to leave.”

  “I’m game,” Randy said eagerly.

  One by one, the rest of the team volunteered. Even Hernando wanted to go, and he had gotten only about an hour of sleep since his return with Bernie.

  Back at the road, John surveyed the damage with a critical eye. None of the RVs had made it through the explosion unscathed. Most had suffered moderate damage. His own now had a broken windshield and several windows were missing. Many of the men sleeping in the tents had suffered severe burns when their shelters had been enveloped in flames. Most of those men had died when they inhaled flames as they sought to escape. It took John’s men fifteen minutes to determine just how bad the explosion had hurt them, and when John learned the extent of the losses, he knew it was time to withdraw from the area. He was now down to less than sixty men who were uninjured and capable of fighting an entrenched enemy behind formidable defenses. He knew he stood to lose at least half that number in an all out assault. He felt they could win against the weakened defenses and less adequately trained defenders, but the cost was too great. Several of the men were already talking quietly among themselves as they watched him and awaited instructions.

  “Load up everything, men,” John said in a loud and calm tone of voice. “This accident has screwed us royally. We need to get our wounded somewhere safe and lick our wounds. I’m not going to risk half our forces in an attempt to take the refuge.”

  John noted expressions of relief on most of the faces staring back at him. Here and there among the men, a few seemed upset with the decision to leave. They wanted to continue the fight, but they held their tongues in light of the fact that so many of the others were ready to leave the area.

  “Well, don’t just stand there! Get moving! That fireball will pull in every damned zombie from miles around!” John shouted to get the men moving.

  The marauder leader waited until the men were hard at work getting ready to depart, and then he went inside his RV to survey the damage. He thought it was odd that Dana didn’t meet him in the main room as she usually did. He knew that it would have been impossible for her to have slept through the explosion.

  The exterior walls of the RV around his bedroom were relatively undamaged. Therefore, he hadn’t been concerned about Dana’s safety. Yet, when she didn’t meet him inside the recreation vehicle, he became concerned and moved back toward the bedroom. He entered the room and saw that the bed was still made and that she hadn’t slept in it. Nor was she in the room.

  John searched the RV from end to end looking for Dana, and then he grew angry when he discovered that she was gone. It then occurred to him that she may have stepped outside to go get supplies from one of the supply trucks. He had shown her whi
ch trucks to go to for food, and they had been running low on edibles, so it was possible that she had made a supply run.

  John exited the RV and walked toward the supply trucks. He found that the explosion had damaged several of them extensively. He was still standing there taking in the damage when one of the men stopped and said, “Oh, boss, I was supposed to let you know that Dana went on that errand you gave her.”

  “She did?” John asked, not letting on that he had no idea what the man meant by that comment.

  “Yes, she took one of the scout trucks. She said you wanted her to check out an area to our north. The funny thing is, when she left, she drove south. Your girl may be lost, boss,” the man answered.

  John frowned and said, “That woman has no sense of direction. Well, that’s too damned bad for her. We have to leave, so she’s on her own. Now get back to work.”

  “Sure thing, John,” the man responded, and then he rushed away to get started loading his gear.

  John had lied to protect himself. The men were already starting to doubt him. If Dana made a fool of him in front of his men, it was only a matter of time before one of them decided he had been the boss too long and took matters into his own hands.

  John walked back toward his RV, cursing Dana under his breath the whole time. He made his way to the driver’s seat and cleaned up the glass from the broken windshield. It took him fifteen minutes to prepare the vehicle for travel, and then he settled into the driver’s seat. He sat there thinking for a moment, and then he said, “Screw you, Dana. You’ve been nothing but bad luck for me since day one.”

  John started his RV and turned it around so that it was facing north. The other men turned their vehicles in that direction as well. A minute later, John sounded his horn to get everyone’s attention. He used the public address capability of his radio to make an announcement. He said, “It’s time to go. Leave anything you haven’t loaded yet. We’ll replace it later.”