Report for 7 May 2010:
The mission was straightforward enough; Locate the people just outside of town holed up in a small community that was besieged by Zak. We took 2 Humvees and 2 6X6 trucks. 12 people in all, I, John, J.T. (John’s son the Marine), Jake, Maria, Albert, Gary, Dwight, Keith, David, Tom and Seth (Who’s grandson, Tommy was sick but only with pneumonia thankfully). The drive was a calm five miles into the rolling hills of central Kentucky. Farms dot the landscape and farm animals graze in the now tall grasses. Once in a while we would come across a few Z’s in the field or trying to cross the road. There’s a joke in there somewhere but I am too tired to find anything funny at this point in time. The community is a newer subdivision layout that used to be a large horse farm years ago, so it has new houses and several branch roads. By now we know there are either people still alive or freshly dead when we see Zak milling around a home or store, so we keep our eyes peeled for that.
I was given direction and John is my navigator, so I take the lead Humvee, the 6X6’s are lightly armored, they come next and then Maria is bringing up the rear with the other Humvee. We keep our radios on for each other and I also have the CB we installed in the truck on to listen. J.T. has been reaching up through the seats when not scouring the countryside.
‘Hello, is anyone listening to this channel? Over.’ J.T. would try this every few minutes. We were nearing the turnoff for the road we needed when the radio crackled to life.
‘Hello? Can anyone hear ussss….’signal failed then static, then came back on ‘We need help! We are on Rushton Road, just off airport road can anyone hear us?!?!’ The static started but not before you could hear something pounding in the background and then a gunshot. The signal went dead then.
‘Know where that is?’ I asked John.
‘Keep going, Airport road is up on the left a little further. Once we are on that it is just another mile if that on the right.’ I nodded and grabbed the radio mic with my right hand.
‘Listen up guys we just got an SOS on the CB. We are going to pick up the pace as they sound like they need some help, now.’ With that I pushed the truck up to 60, occasionally dodging an empty car, truck (again, who gets out of their car during this?) or a jay-walking zombie.
Airport road came up in about 3 minutes on the left and I slowed and used my signal so there would no missing my intentions. We made the turn onto a paved but rough road. We had to slow almost immediately as we saw two cars blocking the road ahead, one of which was burned off its’ wheels.
‘I don’t like this.’ J.T. said from the back. ‘Looks too much like Iraq.’ Bending to his experience, I asked.
‘So what do we do? Push through, go around or what?’
‘Normally there are either snipers, or a bomb in one of the vehicles. Here, this doesn’t make sense. The grass around the sides of the road looks passable and has tracks in it. I maybe just paranoid. ‘ He looked out the side windows, there were no close houses .
‘Paranoid is my middle name.’ I said as we stopped. I radioed to the rest to be on the lookout and to stay put. My first instinct was to ram the vehicles and go on through, but J.T. had more experience in this than I ever will so I waited.
‘Try to go around on the left, your natural instinct is to go around on the right, so if there is a trap it should be there.’ I nodded and wheeled the Humvee off the road to the left. The road dropped off a good foot and then leveled out quickly. The Humvee started to slid to the left and the I gunned it back toward the road, tires spinning. We heard a crash behind us and the 6X6 was lying on its driver side in a large hole in the grass. Apparently we just missed the edge or it did not open under us. I slammed to a stop as the other truck and Humvee swung wide and went around the downed truck. We looked around us and all to our left was the airfield and the right was a few houses, but no movement.
‘Dumb trap. Dumb us.’ I said as I got out with my rifle scanning the houses. J.T. jumped out the rear driver side door and swept pass me to check on the guys in the truck, Terry and Seth. Both were crawling out of the passenger side window when J.T. got to them. Still no movement. Maria took point in her Humvee and waited in front of the other 6X6.
‘Weird. No one here to greet us…’ John said from in the Humvee as he scanned the houses with his rifle. No birds were singing in the tall grass. Shit. Zak was nearby.
‘J.T. get them back here on the double!’ I yelled and got back in the Humvee grabbing the radio.
‘Maria, look for Zs. I got a feeling we are sitting near some.’
‘Aye, G. I see some at two o’clock. About 4 of them near a house. Wait. More coming. Count ten now.’
I looked up and to the right and saw the first one coming out of the tall grass, low and bent over like an animal. It moved FAST. Almost running. Loping like those cavemen you see in the movies.
‘I really don’t like this, man.’ John said as he watched the zombie lope toward the lead Humvee. A short crack and it went down, a spray of blood flying from its skull. One of Maria’s crew fired from her truck.
J.T., Tom and Seth jumped into the back of our truck as more of the things started out of the houses to our right. A few of them were fast but most were your garden variety Zak. We then moved out without firing on any more of them. The fast ones kept up for about a hundred yards then they slowed and looked confused then stumbled off the road back towards the houses.
‘What the Hell was that all about?’ J.T. said as he watched the last one turn and shamble away.
‘Maybe they are getting territorial. I’ve seen wild dogs do that on our farm.’ Tom mentioned as we drove along. Great. Just great. The road we needed was coming up on the right and we could tell which house the call came from. A two story house second from the corner, boarded up windows, and about, oh, I don’t know, sixty or so zombies surrounding it.
‘Not good.’ J.T. echoed our thoughts from the back.
‘You think?’ John replied.
‘What do we go, G?’ Maria’s voice came over the radio. I picked up the mic, ‘We’re here to extract any survivors and to do that we gotta clean the yard first. Keith, Dwight, get that 6X6 back far and shoot from the cab, do not come out unless it’s clear or you have to. Everyone else, same thing, pick your targets, if they get close we will keep moving the Humvees back until we erase them.’ I hoped this would work. I hate leading people. Too bad people followed me anyway. We started picking off the Zs and they didn’t notice us until we had wasted a good dozen. They then slowly turned in our direction and came at us in earnest. We kept firing until the last one dropped then we moved as close to the house as possible.
We yelled to the house for about a full minute before anyone answered from the upper windows. A middle aged man and a teen age girl, armed with a shotgun answered us back. There was five more people inside, three women and two men.
We were loading them all into the 6X6 when the first shot came in and killed David. Automatic weapons chattered from our left coming from the airfield. What is wrong with this world? Men and women were pouring out of one of the small buildings at the edge of the airfield firing on us. There must have been close to twenty of them. We fought back, but were just out gunned; they had at least two sniper rifles, hitting us too easily. We lost Dwight and Seth in the next few seconds. We did the only thing we could, we ran. I was getting into the Humvee when a burning pain like I never felt before knocked me to the ground. The pain was centered on my right leg, looking down I saw a hole in my right ankle. Bullets pounded and ricocheted around me as I dragged myself into the cab. I got the door shut as more rounds scarred and clouded the armored window. Maria’s Humvee and the other 6X6 had already turned around and passed me going back down the road, the bandits getting closer.
‘C’mon let’s get out of here!’ Jake yelled from the back next to J.T. (When he made to us and got in is beyond me) I stepped on the accelerator and nearly passed out from the pain. I watched in horror as blood pooled on the floor around my foot. I spun the Humvee around in a tight circle and was getting it back on the road when the truck caught fire.
The day was getting better by the second. I saw another Molotov cocktail, a bottle of flammable liquid with a burning rag stopper fly by us and smash on the grass near us. Flames spread out in a ring in the tall grass coming closer to the truck. I had the truck wide open and spinning all four tires when they finally got purchase on the road. We rocketed forward as more and more bullets chewed at us. Every once and a while a bullet would get through the armor (damn snipers) but most were just not powerful enough to penetrate. I was almost to the end of Airport road when the front tire blew out. We slewed sideways, left the road, hit the grass and skidded toward the main road. We were down below the road level when we met the main road (all the roads around here are banked for some reason, this thought came through my mind at this time) shot up the bank and flew across four lanes of highway, slid again and rolled down the other bank. I thought sure as we came to rest I would pass out. I was not so lucky.
J.T. pulled his dad, John out of the passenger side (HE had passed out from the impacts) and Jake was hauling my stunned ass out my door. Luckily we had made enough time on the bandits that the 6X6 came back for us and we all loaded in the back. It took J.T. and Jake to get me up into the bed of the large truck. As we pulled away I watched the Humvee burn in earnest as the diesel fuel poured onto the grass. We all huddled toward the floor as bullets spanged off the heavy trucks lower plates and tore through the upper canvas covered bed. The people we rescued had the haunted look of seeing too much and did not talk on the way back. The large truck trundled up to its top speed of 60 MPH and I think we stayed at that speed until we got close to our first hidden lookout station. When John found out which leg I was shot in he couldn’t stop laughing. Oh, he was sorry I was shot, but John handles things differently that the rest of us sometimes.
‘So how you gonna limp with both legs, Kemo Sabe?’
‘You know you are too funny for life, why don’t you jump out of the back of the truck. I don’t think even the zombies would want you.’ I gruffly answered. The pain came in nauseating waves all the way home. For once I wished I could pass out. Twice now we have been set upon by bandits. I am so sick of this shit. Once I am up again, there will be payback. Oh, this I guarantee. We were still making plans when we got back to base. We lost three good people and gained seven. We lost two vehicles that we cannot replace. This will end. Yes, I am making it personal.
Over (For now).
