“Ever seen one of those experiments where they introduced a small electrical charge into a dead frog, and its legs started kicking?”
“Yes.”
“The re-animated brain is doing the same thing to these zombies. The disease creates extreme amounts of Kryptopyrrole that in turn is causing an electro-chemical reaction in the brain. It is just sending electrical waves through what’s left of the nervous system to move the rest of the body. The nervous system is still operating as a two-way street with the infected being able to see, hear, taste, and feel to some point until the nerve endings decay away.”
“Okay, so how are they working together and how do we stop them?”
“It’s some sort of hive mentality. From what I gather, they saw the coast guard cutter in Mobile, found it interesting and started walking after it. Once they made it to Highway 59, they found your motorcycle patrols and followed them. Now they are coming here, and I am sure when they see the island it will consume them with desire. Be the one thing in their life.
“The cerebellum, the softball-sized base of the brain is the center of the nervous system and controls inner ear balance and movement. This is the section that seems enlarged and almost, for lack of a better word, healthy. It seems to be feeding off the rest of the brain. It is quite fascinating.”
“That’s great, so how do we stop them?”
“Stop the cerebellum. Blow them up, cut them apart, shoot them, burn them until the brain cooks. No matter what you do, you have to kill the brain. Specifically
that
part of the brain. That’s the only way you are going to stop them.”
“Do you think we will be successful in outwaiting them if we just build a high enough wall?”
“I doubt it, their blood has congealed since the heart and circulation set has stopped, their liver and kidneys are dead, their skin is drying out and cracking open…but as long as the brain is alive, its producing electricity and this electric current is moving the body. The muscles themselves are dying since they have no blood to carry oxygen to them. They are turning necrotic and rotting. However, there seems to be some sort of putrification due to the nervous system overload that is slowing the decay process. It may take years for them to actually de-animate for good.”
“This just gets better and better. Thanks anyway, sir,” Stone said as he stood up to leave.
“I’m just answering your questions.”
Stone stopped as he flipped through his notebook. “Thank you for your time, sir. One last thing and I will leave you alone; do you know how to make black powder?”
— | — | —
ChapteR 53
November 19, 0530
Stone looked down from the barricade in the center of the bridge. The Horde had begun showing up en masse at just after midnight. The laddertruck and its sandbagged machinegun nest were abandoned and the guards at the post fell back over the wall, pulling the steps up behind them.
It was a solid mass of
homo zombius
, the new species of biped that had taken over the earth. They were the last and worst evolution of man and would cleanse the planet of the hairless apes that had held sway for the past few millenniums. They stretched for as far as the eye could see.
Along the newly built sixty-foot long, ten-foot high, cement cinderblock wall was constructed a platform scaffold on the island side which Stone and a hundred fighters gathered around to look at the infected standing on the other side who looked up with outstretched arms. On each end of the wall was mounted one of the
Fish Hawks
fifty-caliber machineguns. Four Coasties stood by the weapons, with 10,000 rounds of heavy machinegun ammunition linked in yard after yard of brass, lead and steel.
“Pretty scary sight,” Stone said.
“No,” said Reid, “Scary is a chupacabra, the ATF, or the Sham-Wow guy; I’m not afraid of a goddamned zombie.”
Stone managed a laugh.
“So, now what?” Reid asked peering over the side as he spit a stream of dip-juice into the face of an infected below him.
“We hold them until the whole party gets here then we start mowing them down. Is the radio station ready if we need to fall back?”
“They have been making announcements all day, for everyone that isn’t military to head for the Fort, taking what they can carry with them just in case. I drove around with a patrol a while ago and it looks like everyone has boarded up their houses for a hurricane.”
“That’s good. Can’t be too safe.”
Stone looked up and down the line at the assembled company of MPs and new militia members. They would have to do. Four other companies just like it sat at the Armory to call for reinforcements, but until then they would rotate every six hours. Everyone had been warned to only fire if the infected below had climbed the wall or had somehow broken through. Stone wanted to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
“What’s on your mind, Top?” Stone asked the old First Sergeant.
“Ever won a game of pinball, sir? That is what we are doing here, you know. We are just lasting longer than everyone else did, but on a long enough time line, that pinball is gonna fall.”
Stone looked up and down the line. The expressions on the faces of the defenders in the early morning twilight were different on each figure. Some looked despondent. Some anxious. Some scared shitless. The occasional watery eye was always balanced out by the nervous smile on the next man or the lip chewing of the third soldier in the line.
From where he stood, almost every man, woman, and child holding the line could hear him. A commander’s delivery of oration to his troops, to remind them of the importance of the battle for themselves, their family, the children and grandchildren you are yet to have and ultimately the entire human race, is the key to battle he had always believed. An officer is, by definition, a professional liar. If people trust you, they will follow you. However, sometimes you have to lie to them and make them understand something that is not understandable to keep them going. He cleared his throat and yelled from one end of the wall to the other.
“Give me your ears, people. A buddy isn’t the guy next to you watching the game or drinking a beer. A buddy is the guy who is next to you while you are bleeding, haven’t slept in a week, when you think your arm is broken, and he isn’t leaving you behind. We are all buddies here. You are fighting not for me, but for yourself, for the person next to you, for the town behind you.
“This is more than just a fight. This is a textbook struggle against everything pure and evil as much as the Archangel Michael versus Lucifer is. We are fighting extinction. You are all biblical, fire breathing, zombie-killing heroes. Are you with me?”
The line erupted in cheers and yells and each of the defenders thrust their weapons in the air with satisfaction. Stone nodded and slapped those near him on the back and returned a number of high-fives.
“Every now and then you put the machine into
Tilt
, First Sergeant Reid, remember that.” Stone said as he climbed down the scaffold. “I’ve been up here all night. Haven’t slept since Tuesday. I am headed back to the armory for a few hours to get a powernap in. If anything happens, call me, and I’ll be back with the Ready Company.”
««—»»
The sound of fifty-caliber heavy machinegun fire carries for a great distance. Stone thought it was in a dream until he opened his eyes on his rack in the office of the Armory. He shot straight up on the mattress and was on his feet just as the RTO MP burst through his door white as a sheet.
“The Horde is climbing the wall!” the man said.
“Assemble the Ready Company. Get the commanders of the other companies and have them form up. Get the Reserve Company to their barricade on the fort road,” Stone calmly ordered as he moved through the armory, throwing on his TA50 gear and press checking his M4.
Chaos reigned as dozens of old and new MPs yelled orders at people who, up until three days ago, were merely modern holocaust survivors but were now soldiers. A weapon fired in the room, and a corporal slapped the man who had accidentally triggered it in his haste to get out the door. A month ago, he had nothing but pre-outbreak MPs under his command that had years of formal training, drills, and, almost without exception, at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. Now his professionals had been so greatly diluted that they made up less than 10% of his new battalion.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Stone yelled to the crowd, jumping in his command hummer and waiting only a second for a half-dozen armed men and women to climb in the back and grab onto its sides for a ride. As he screamed out of the Armory, other vehicles followed. The tactical radio was alive with chatter from a score of voices talking over each other and giving conflicting information.
He looked at his watch. He had only slept for an hour. How could it have gone so pear-shaped so fast? He was not afraid of the zombies. He was not afraid of combat. He was just afraid of letting his people down.
The bridge was less than a mile from the armory and he covered it in record time. The roar of the pair of Coast Guard heavy machineguns rattled and vibrated the bridge as he stepped foot out of the hummer and ran to the scaffold. A shower of cigar-sized empty brass and accompanying steel links fell away from the smoking guns as the Coasties fired down into the Horde of infected below them.
He yelled at Reid, who stood on the scaffold firing his M4 down over the side. The hundred men and women of the company holding the line followed the sergeant’s example and were doing the same. Stone could not hear a thing over the roar of the firefight, much less make his own voice heard. He climbed the scaffold and looked over the side for himself to assess the situation.
He was halfway to the top of the scaffold when he saw the problem. The Horde below had piled and pressed their way against the barricade until they were pushed down to the asphalt bottom of the bridge itself. New waves stood atop the old and ascended the hill of gyrating flesh below them like a heinous ramp, pointed right to the top of the barricade. Already, grey stinking arms were reaching out and pulling shooters off the wall and into the hungry crowd below.
The Coasties were doing their best to chip away at the throng of thousands pushing against the wall with their huge machineguns and were the deciding factor in this defense. The two guns roared on each to the left and the right of Stone, firing six rounds per second between them from their smoking muzzles. To help the overheating guns, militiamen were pouring bottles of water over their red-hot barrels, producing white billows of steam as a result. Without any spare barrels, they had to make do with what they had.
Jenny stood at the First Sergeant’s side, snapping and barking to help keep up her master’s resolve to fight, which in turned helped the entire company.
Stone chose his shots, picking off individual infected as they waded up the flesh ramp towards the top of the wall, bowling them over with single shots. He grimaced as he realized that many of the shooters on the wall were just blazing away, wasting their precious ammunition. Several times, just about to pull the trigger on a head shot, his target was blown off the wall with ineffective body shots. One of these zombies he had to track three times on its way up the ramp before he was able to knock him off it for good.
Then Stone heard the fifty-caliber to his left stop firing. He looked in its direction and saw the two Coasties furiously working the bolt on the gun, trying to get it back into action. Before they could, decayed hands reached out and grabbed the barrel of the gun, sticking to its flame-bright steel with sizzling results. Other infected used their now-stuck forerunners to pull themselves up and onto the wall.
As the first defender jumped off the barricade and started to run, Stone knew they were fucked.
— | — | —
ChapteR 54
Billy was sitting on the
Fooly Involved
with Cat, watching his fishing line in the water below. In the middle of the regular public service announcement, WGSH started playing Bing Crosby’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”
He threw the pole down without even reeling it in and ran to the boat’s control panel, starting her diesels with one hand and then throttling up with the other to race back to the empty marina as fast as he could.
The old crooner’s song had begun to play for the second time as he found himself zipping through the inner harbor, past row after row of abandoned slips. He had never seen the marina so empty. Many of the boat owners had vanished quietly as word got out about the coming attack on the island from the legions of the dead. Progressively each day of the past week, the docks had gotten less and less crowded. Finally, that morning, Jarvis had ordered everyone out of the marina and down the beach to the waters of Navy Cove under the shadow of old Fort Morgan. Billy stayed behind to pass the word to those had not heard and to pick up the radio station crew if the wall fell.
He was looping the bowline over the dock closest to the road when he heard the fast approaching truck rocket into the parking lot. In the distance towards downtown, he could hear the sound of rifle fire and the muted
crump
of faraway explosions.