Aliens Versus Zombies (33 page)

The nine, plus Hiram, left the cave minutes later. They needed enough light to see by for the trip back through the woods. No one wanted to risk falling in the river in the dark, but they also didn’t want to emerge too soon and be spotted by the aliens.

The plan was to split into threes and take different routes back into town. They would converge on the farm supply store for gear and then the grocery store for food. They hoped that by staying in small groups, walking closely together, they might be less conspicuous than a large group would be, and therefore less likely to draw a squad of soldiers back to town.

Chrissy, Daniel, and Jason were in one group, with Amanda, Joanie, and Suzi in another, and Moose, Tim, and Julia in the third. That way each trio had at least one uninjured person, just in case. Not that they could do much, with only one weapon among the three groups.

Before they reached the edge of the woods, night enveloped them. The moon had already risen. However, with all the trees forming a canopy overhead the filtered moonlight did little to light their way. Each member took more than one fall, tripping over a fallen branch, or stepping into a small depression hidden by the deep shadows.

Joanie carried the frightened Amanda; Suzi had her own “passenger” to worry about.

“Aunt Joanie, are there monsters in the woods?” She had her tiny arms wrapped tightly around Joanie’s neck, with her face pressed into the other’s shoulder. If there
were
monsters, she didn’t want to see them..

“No, little one, monsters not in woods.”

Each trio eventually found their way out of the woods. It took more than two hours to walk from the cave to Armitage Feed and Farm Supply. It sold camping gear as well as hunting supplies. They were able to pick up most of the miscellaneous gear they would need for their planned invasion. If the aliens were scanning for heat signatures, having all of them together risked bringing the aliens crashing down on their heads. But they needed supplies, including food and water.

After gearing up, they walked the three blocks to Kate’s Market and got just enough food for their trip. They didn’t want to weigh themselves down for the long walk ahead.

* * * *

The nine walked all night, stopping only twice for short rest breaks. The next morning they reached their destination, Pleasant Valley, another small town on the far side of Haven from the aliens.

And they finally had a chance to treat Chrissy’s fracture. The arm had been throbbing intensely for hours. They didn’t have the materials to make a proper cast for her forearm, but they found a wraparound wrist brace in a pharmacy and after putting it on her wrapped it and the rest of her forearm tightly in gauze and white medical tape to immobilize it. She couldn’t afford to be on narcotic pain-killers for the pain, but they found some prescription-strength ibuprofen and that at least muted the pain to a dull ache.

During an earlier scouting trip, Daniels had spotted the Army National Guard and Reserves armory on the outskirts of town. That’s where they headed after the pharmacy. This was the sticky part of the mission. If it was secured from within, they didn’t have the weaponry necessary to force their way in.

The fence gate lay on the ground outside the fence. It had clearly burst outward. Someone had been in a hurry to leave. The group made it to the front door without incident. It was slightly ajar. Evidently whomever was the last one out didn’t feel it necessary to secure the building from Zoms.

Daniels pushed the door open, rifle at the ready. It creaked slightly, but other than that, the building was as silent as a grave. The group made their way inside and down the long central corridor.

The Quartermaster’s office was near the back on the left. The door was locked, but the safety glass window yielded to several hard hits from the butt of Daniels’ rifle, showering the floor with bits of glass. He reached in and unlocked it. He then had to bypass the desk lock with a pry bar they had brought with them.

“Aha!” He held up the master key ring. Bingo.”

Then he led the group all the way to the back and around the corner to the real prize.

He unlocked the door and threw it open.

“Whoa, dude,” Moose gushed. “That’s…that’s…awesome!”

Vickers whistled in appreciation. “Well, ain’t that pretty.”

Arrayed in racks on all four walls and in several aisles were weapons. Hundreds of assault rifles, various types of grenades, both explosive and nonexplosive—smoke and tear gas—shoulder-fired missile launchers, and more.

“Cool!” Jason said with a huge grin.

Daniels wasn’t grinning. “There’s a lot of great weapons here, and I wish I had the time to train you all on several of them, but we don’t have months. If we don’t act fast, they may come looking for us again. We have to hit them back before they expect it.”

“Guns are bad,” Amanda whispered, with a wide-eyed knowing nod.

“Sweetie,” Daniels knelt and said in a soft voice, “guns aren’t bad. They’re just tools. Sometimes people use them to do bad things. And sometimes good people have to use them so bad people can’t hurt good people. Uncle Jay wasn’t a bad person, was he? Chrissy and I aren’t bad people, right?”

“Right!” She raised her chin and stuck out her chest, little fists firmly planted on her hips.

“Okay, good.” He smiled, and then stood and addressed the others. “We’re going to concentrate on two main weapons for the maximum effect. The good news is that they’re simple to use. So simple even a dumb grunt like me can use it.” He flashed a self-deprecating grin. “And if I can use it, so can you.”

He walked down one aisle to a rack of launchers.

“This is the Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon II. That’s a mouthful, so we call it the SMAW II Serpent, or just Serpent. It was originally a Marines-only weapon, but the Army did some exploratory testing and ordered a few thousand of them. They eventually decided against adopting it, though. I guess some of the leftovers ended up here, which is good for us, because I’m very familiar with it.

“The SMAW II is designed primarily as a bunker buster and antipersonnel weapon, and secondarily a light-armor killer. It has a maximum range of 550 yards against a 
tank
-sized target. It fires several types of rockets, but the one we’re interested in is the High-Explosive Dual Purpose rocket, or HEDP. It can punch through two feet of solid steel. I don’t know what the alien vehicles are made of or what kind of fortifications they might have around their headquarters, but if we can catch them unaware we might have a chance.

“Now, it’s not a missile; it can’t track a target. It just goes where you point it. The eleven pound Serpent holds one rocket. It uses an
 integrated thermal sight and a laser range finder to pinpoint a target
. The electronic fire control system makes it easy to find and lock onto a target. Fully loaded, it weighs about thirty pounds. The rockets are eighteen pounds apiece, so a strong man, in a pinch, could carry one reusable launcher and two or three rockets.”

He walked to another rack with a different launch system.

“Over here is the FIM92J, better known as the Stinger. It’s a ground-to-air missile. It has dual seekers, meaning it can home in on infrared or UV. We can use this to knock down ships taking off or landing. It weighs a little more than the SMAW: twelve pounds for the launcher and twenty-two for the missile, but it can reach speeds up to Mach 2.5 in seconds; it has a range of more than 15,000 feet, but you won’t be shooting at anything that high up.

“The way I see it, Suzi, Joanie, Julia, and Chrissy—especially with her arm—can’t handle one of these. Besides I think Suzi needs to stay behind and take care of Amanda. That leaves Moose, Tim, Jason, and me to handle the launchers.”

“Me?” Jason asked. “I get to play with a bazooka? Awesome!” He practically bounded with excitement.

“Calm down, Jason. No one is “playing” here. This is real life and death, not a video game. If you die here, you stay dead. You don’t get a replay.”

Jason looked suitably chastened. “Sorry.”

“Excuse
me
,” Julia said, with a frosty tone in her voice. “I know I’m just one of the ‘wimminfolk’, but what makes you think I can’t handle it? I may not be as strong as you big tough men, but I’ll bet I’m every bit as strong as Jason here. Look at him, he’s a beanpole. Maybe I can’t carry two rockets, but I can certainly carry one. I deserve to get a shot at those goddamned aliens, just as much as the rest of you. We’ve all lost friends and loved ones at their hands. For Christ’s sake, they killed everyone we know, but us nine.” After her outburst, she paused to catch her breath.

“I— You’re absolutely right, Julia. My apologies. Okay, here’s how I see it. Moose is the strongest, so he operates the Stinger. He can probably handle three missiles plus the launcher. That’s seventy-eight pounds, more or less. Do you think you can manage that, Moose?” He looked up at the much taller, more muscular man.

“In my sleep, dude.”

“Good. The rest of us will use the SMAW. Two rockets each for Tim and me, and one each for Julia and Jason. Joanie can carry a rocket, even if she can’t fire one. That gives us ten shots at the bastards who killed our friends. Sound good?”

The others all agreed.

“Chrissy, your job will be to blow the power substation near the south side of the city. There’s one at the north end as well, but that feeds that side of town. If we blow the southern one, it should take down their defenses and sensors at least long enough for us to get in. There’s plenty of C-4 here that you can use. I’ll show you how.”

“Okay,” Tim said, “But how do we get all that equipment there? We can’t carry it fifty miles or whatever to the city.”

“Ah, that’s the best part. If we’re lucky, we get to go in style.” He grinned. “I’ll show you.”

Daniels led the group to the motor pool in the back. Inside were four lethal looking vehicles painted in camo, as well as several smaller vehicles.

“Well, well, well. Say hello to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, Mark 4b. Just as the Humvee replaced the WWII-era Jeep, the JLTV—affectionately called the Jilted Lover, or just Jilt—replaced the Humvee a dozen or so years ago. I was hoping we might find a Mark 4 or two here, but I didn’t expect the 4B. Someone with pull had to request these babies; they’re
expensive
with a capital X. The Mark 4 is fast, heavily armored, and—most importantly—the Mark 4b model is also stealthy. It’s not completely invisible, but it’s damn near close. It incorporates recent developments in nanomaterials technology.

“Why?” Jason asked. “What’s so special about it? It just looks like a fancy truck.”

“Oh, it’s much more than that. The 4b is coated in radar-absorbing paint similar to what’s used on stealth planes, but impregnated with billions of tiny LEDs and active-pixel sensors, like the ones used in digital cams. In stealth mode, adaptive optics, or AO, captures a hi-def image of what’s immediately adjacent to the Jilt, from any angle, and displays it on the
opposite
side of the vehicle in real-time. If it’s parked in front of a tree, anyone facing the tree from the far side of the Jilt will see the trunk of the tree and the surrounding grass behind the vehicle displayed on the side of the Jilt facing the observer. To the enemy, it looks like the Jilt is transparent. From the air, the enemy sees the terrain underneath, digitally corrected to eliminate the shadow. The farther away the viewer is, the better the effect.

“Of course, you can’t paint the windows. But the glass is coated with a transparent polymer layer containing the same technology. The effect isn’t perfect, especially up close, but unless someone takes a good close look, they probably won’t notice the small imperfections in the AO.”

Tim raised a hand to interrupt. “Excuse me, but putting optics in the paint on the outside of the armor seems counterproductive. Wouldn’t the paint get damaged in a firefight?”

“Absolutely. But if people are shooting at you, it means the AO didn’t fool them, so it’s less important at that point than the armor.”

“Gotcha. Thanks.”

“No problem. If you have more questions, ask away. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. The Mark 4b also diffuses heat effectively. On a frigid day, or cool night, it’ll still show up on infrared as a heat source, but more like a warm foggy patch of ground, rather than a discrete object. On a hot day, it tends to blend into the surrounding heat. It can cross almost any kind of terrain at speed. With these babies, we might be able to get to the city without being spotted. In this situation, the stealth characteristics are more important than the armor. If they spot us, they can take us out from the air before we ever get to the city. Any questions so far?”

There were none—only a blurted “Cool!” from Jason—so he continued.

“Now, the projectiles are stored in crates, apart from the launchers. So we’ll back the trucks up to where the munitions are, then pick up the launchers, and then I’ll show you how to use them. Unfortunately, we can’t afford to fire off some practice shots. The aliens would see the explosions and probably hit us right afterwards. But once you get a target in sight, you lock onto it and fire. As long as you get a good lock, you’ll almost certainly hit your target. The weapons are that accurate.”