Zombie Killers (Book 8): Bad Company Read online

  ZOMBIE KILLERS #8

  BAD COMPANY

  “There ain’t no plot to this, no story. It’s just killing, and dying, like all war, and it’s been going on since Cane picked up a rock and bashed Abel's head in. The undead is just a symptom of a rot that’s human nature. Someday, they’ll be gone, and the killing and dying will go right on happening.”

  ~ Doc Lamare

  Chapter 262

  I woke when the sun hit me, mouth screaming for water as I lay on the beach, on an unrecognizable shore. I rolled over and looked down at my leg; the prosthetic was barely hanging by its nylon straps. Saying a short prayer of thanks, I tightened it, then struggled back into my pants, which I had used as an improvised life vest. My boots were gone, but I still had a sock on my good foot. It would have to do for now. The camelback had gone the same way as my boots, but I didn’t think water in Florida would be that much of a problem.

  Glancing around quickly, I saw no immediate threat, so I did the second rule of scouts. Inventory. My .22 pistol was still secure in its leg holster, but the spare mags were gone, and somehow, I hadn’t ditched my survival butt pack. Maybe the air in it had helped keep me afloat, I didn’t remember. In it were a stripped down MRE, a bag of fifty .22 LR shells, Gerber multi-tool, a small five shot .22 revolver, gun oil, water purification tablets, a collapsible cup, one hundred feet of parachute cord, compass, a disposable Bic lighter, and a small, lightweight hammock. And a spoon, thank God. I quickly thumbed out the rounds from the automatic’s magazine, unchambered it, and feverishly disassembled and reassembled the pistol, trying to dry all the parts. It would work for now, but salt water was extremely corrosive, so I squeezed out a few drops of precious gun oil on the mechanisms. Reloading from the box of spare ammo, I glanced around with my back to the sea. Then I did the same for the revolver, even though it had seemed dry wrapped in the pack.

  My next order of business was, where the hell was I, and was there anyone else around me? I looked out to sea, and saw nothing in the distance but the sun just over the horizon. In front of me, drifting on the waves, was the body of a Mountain Republic soldier, recognizable by his green BDU uniform. Even as I looked, it was pulled under by either a shark or barracuda.

  To my left, the beach stretched away southward, empty except for the usual garbage of civilization. To my right a hundred meters off, another body was washed up, lower down in the water, being tossed to and fro by the gentle surf. I staggered to it, hoping it was a sailor or one of the Mountain Republic prisoners, and not anyone I knew. As I got closer, the multicam uniform betrayed my fears, and my heart began to pound. I ran, tears blinding me, and rolled the body over.

  The pale, swollen face of Obi looked up at me with dead, accusing eyes. He had been my machine gunner, and a good kid, even if a bit full of himself. Another death on my conscience. Screw it, I didn’t care anymore. He knew what he was getting into, I told myself, trying not to look at his eyes as I looted his pockets for anything useful.

  After sitting next to the corpse for a while, just staring out to sea, I took the biggest piece of debris I could find, a piece of 2x4, and scooped a shallow grave out of the sand. With a heave, I tilted Obi’s body into it, and covered him over as best I could. It was a better burial than most got these days.

  Feeling better, I turned inland to the tallest pine tree I could find and started climbing. Unfamiliar birds and insects scattered away from the tree as I clambered over branches; hopefully they wouldn’t draw any attention to my position.

  “No black butterflies, what the F!” I muttered as I pulled some branches out of the way to look northward. As expected, hidden from me earlier by a curve in the shoreline, the gray, hazy bulk of the supercarrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan sat hull up on the horizon, grounded forever. That put it about fifteen miles away, and made my destination about a dozen miles or so southward.

  To the east, I had hoped to see some evidence of the U.S.S. Georgia, the converted troop carrying SSBN that had carried me and the rest of Irregular Scout Team One down here to Florida. We were exfiltrating from our last scouting mission when an Anti-Tank Guided Missile, probably a Javelin, had streaked from shore and impacted on the sub's conning tower, or “sail”. The resulting explosion and hard turn at full speed away from the shore had thrown me into the sea, along with several others, and the last I had seen of the sub, and any of my companions, was a fierce fire burning at the top of the sail. The current had quickly swept me northward, alone in the sea, and I had spent the night swimming steadily towards the blackness of shore. Whether the sub had been sunk, or was on its way to Bermuda, I had no idea.

  As for the team, having just found (and looted) Obi's body, that was at least one dead. As for the team, I knew that at least one was dead. I had already found, and looted, the body of my machine gunner, washed up not far me. M I remembered m y wife, Brit O’Neill, had gone into the water next to me, but she was a very strong swimmer, and may have made it back to the boat before the engines really kicked in. It was what I hoped, and the only conclusion I could accept in my mind right now.

  That left three. Sasha Zivcovic, a Serbian mercenary who had been part of the team, off and on, for years. I wasn’t worried about him. Ziv would live or die as the gods decreed it, and he would spit in their eye even then. Captain Shona Lowenstein, a tough NYC Infantry officer who had joined us recently after I saw her fight in Washington DC, and Sergeant Elam Yasser, our Afghani born sniper. Both were tough, resourceful people. Along with my teammates, there had been a dozen or so EPWs from the Mountain republic, a breakaway group of states in the Appalachian Mountains. They were surely dead; all their hands had been zippy tied.

  One person was alive, though. Twice now, before the rain, I had seen a boot print at the very edge of the water, pointing south. I suspected it was Yasser, who would try to cover his tracks out of natural sniper’s habit, and avoid hidden dangers in the jungle, ones a lightly armed man wouldn’t like to meet. The rain had probably wiped away any other signs of him, but I knew where he would be going. South, to the cache.

  My reverie was interrupted by a snuffling sound beneath me. It got louder, then stopped. Looking down, I saw a pair of dull red eyes glowing up at me, framed by long, ratty patches of blonde hair, still held back by a rotten scrunchy. The undead thing’s mouth opened, and I cringed, fumbling for my pistol while trying not to fall out of the tree. If it howled, I was zombie meat. Hundreds of undead would camp out for days under my tree, till thirst drove me down.

  What came out, instead, was a wheezing hiss. The thing had had its’ throat torn out, likely when it was first bitten. Heaving a sigh of relief, I lined up carefully and put one round directly into its forehead. The lights went out, and the bony remains collapsed in a heap.

  Climbing down, the smell got worse and worse. Up north, the cold and freeze, while it doesn’t stop the undead, manages to keep the rot and fungus down. Here in the semi-tropics, after eight years, the body was rank. I didn’t know how they kept going, and didn’t think much of it anyway. My eyes were watering, and I tried to pinch my nose. Just as I got to the last branch, the stiffness in my artificial leg betrayed me and my boot slipped, driving downward into the corpse’s stomach. An immediate explosion of gas enveloped me, and I ran, choking and heaving.

  Just before I reached the beach, I slowed, then stopped. I didn’t want to run out into the ocean, and I needed to get the smell out of my mouth. I took my last bit of clean water from my canteen, swirled it in my mouth, spit it out, and then muttered, “Shit!”

  “Shit is right, old man!” said a female voice beside me, and I spun, raising my pistol. Before I could fire, though, a woman grabbed me in a tight hug. For a secon
d I was tempted to place the pistol against her head and pull the trigger, but then I recognized the cropped purple hair.

  “Shona!” I exclaimed, and hugged her back. We held each other for what seemed a long time, until I started to be more aware of her curves and soft spots than anything else. Neither of us were wearing body armor, and I could feel her pressing up against me through my uniform. I gently peeled her arms away from my waist, and she stood back, wiping away tears.

  Shona Lowenstein was as tough as they come, with deep brown eyes and a dragon tattoo covering scars on her face. Even dirty and tear stained, she was a beautiful woman, but I had always thought of her as a capable, serious soldier.

  “Sorry, Nick. It’s just, well, I’ve always had people from my family or my unit around me. I’m mech infantry, you know? Not some loner scout like you.”

  “Forget it. It was getting to me, too.” Which was bullshit, of course. I LIKED being alone. After Z day, I had spent months living in the Adirondacks by myself. Situations like this, I almost wanted to be by myself.

  “Back to business,” she said. “I came south through the woods. Guess you didn’t find anyone else.”

  I told her about the footprints, saying “I think Yasser is in front of us. Obi is dead, I found his body.”

  She nodded her head for a moment, a quick prayer for a dead comrade. That was all we ever had time for.

  “Brit? Ziv?”

  “No idea. Brit went into the water with me, but we got separated,” I answered.

  She sucked in a deep breath, then let it out. I could see she was starting to get her shit back together. “So, head south to the cache, for starters.”

  I nodded. “It’s about ten miles, and where anyone else will go. If we hustle, we can make it before dark. First things first, though. How are you set for weapons?”

  “Lost it all in the water. Even my survival pack.”

  I handed her the spare .22 revolver and half my ammo, and we set out down the beach.

  Chapter 263

  We didn’t make it to the cache before the sun dropped low in the sky; I wouldn’t have wanted to approach it in the daylight anyway. The best time would be around three in the morning; recon never hurt anyone. Unless you got caught, then it hurt, a lot.

  Besides, I was tired. Shona was, in addition to being a world class athlete, almost twenty years younger than me, and combined with the prosthetic leg, I found myself struggling to keep up. The events of the last twenty four hours , - hell, the last week , - had left me more tired than I had ever felt in my life, so I looked around for a place to fort up. It didn’t take long to find.

  When the apocalypse had started, eight years ago at the end of August, millions of people had fled the coasts in whatever kind of boat or ship they could find. Many had been close to starving or already dead of thirst two weeks later when the first hurricane of the season had swept its way northward, smashing everything in its path. Hundreds of thousands had died in the storm, and their bodies had washed up on the beaches around the world for weeks afterward, or so I had been told.

  The curious thing is, though the boats were often swamped or flipped, many of them didn’t sink, due to modern construction and life saving features. These had also washed up on shore, and the beaches from the Carolinas northward were littered with them. Not so much in Florida, because of the current, but I did see one ahead. The remains of what I guessed to be about a thirty foot cabin cruiser. Perfect place to spend the night; clear field of fire, roof over our heads, maybe even some bunks. Or at least a sheltered flat surface to lie down on. The danger was, of course, undead, but more likely wild animals. Raccoons, skunks, armadillo, snake, maybe even a panther, or who knows, a frigging bear or a person. Still, we would smell them long before we got there. Except for snakes.

  We approached from the landward side, keeping low, with our pistols drawn. Not very accurate past twenty five feet or so, but put enough lead downrange, and it will hit something. Hopefully no one would shoot back with something more accurate. The boat was sideways on the beach, and wordlessly, we rushed it, taking shelter under the front. Around the boat, leading to both the forest and the ocean, were a myriad of footprints, trails worn so deep the recent rain couldn’t erase them.

  I motioned for Shona to cover upwards, and we crept around to the starboard side, making a full circle of the hull. Twice we came across fishing line strung with cans, to sound an alarm, and we gingerly stepped over them. At the bow again, I boosted her up onto the deck, figuring anyone watching for intruders would be looking over the stern, or lowest part. Then I grabbed the railing and pulled myself over, landing with a thump on the fiberglass.

  Here’s a note. If you’re going to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, do pull ups. A shitload of pull-ups. Then do some more. You never know when your upper body strength is going to pull your ass up into a tree or over a railing into safety, and you’ve got to be able to do it with all your gear on and a pack on your back, say an extra sixty pounds. Most of the guys (and girls) I knew on the teams had shoulders like Conan the Barbarian.

  I lay next to Shona, and we slid our way up to the cabin windows, careful not to expose ourselves in silhouette through the window, then wormed our way down either side. I waited until her head appeared around the other side of the cockpit, which was empty, and motioned to the closed cabin door. We both made our way down, facing the door, and I was stumped.

  To prevent water from coming inside, boat doors, or more accurately hatches, open outward. Normally, one of us would have a breaker bar or a sledgehammer to bust the door open, but that wasn’t an option now. Our little .22 rounds would go through the fiberglass door, but not the locking mechanism. Then again, if it were locked, then nothing was inside except maybe a human being, or an undead. From what we had seen, it looked like a survivor was there was some survivor living on the boat.

  So I knocked.

  And stepped quickly one side, not knowing if gunfire would come back at me.

  “GET THE FUCK OFF MY BOAT!” came the muffled shout from inside. A man’s voice, older and gruff. I looked over at Shona in the fading light. She shrugged her shoulders and made a “be my guest” gesture. Thanks.

  “My name is Colonel Nicholas Agostine, Joint Special Operations Command Z, Irregular Scouts.”

  “Your name is gonna be dogshit if you don’t get off my boat in ten seconds!” That was accompanied by the sound of a shotgun rasping back and forth.

  “OK, but if you help us, we have ammo, food and weapons stored not far from here. You must have seen us over the last couple of days. We need place to spend the night before we recover our stuff, and I’m not keen on spending it in the jungle.” As I spoke, I motioned to Shona to move over the top of the doorway. She did, as quiet as she could.

  “Tell your partner that I can hear her moving. If it ain’t moving off the boat, I’m going to fire in three..” and with a BANG the shotgun went off, directly through the doorway. I was showered in splinters of wood and fiberglass, but the lead shot missed me, though I did fall backwards onto a ripped padded bench.

  Shona swung in through the doorway, drop kicking the owner of the shotgun, and sending the gun the gun itself flying. As I said, she was an Olympic caliber martial artist. She disappeared into the cabin, and the grounded cruiser shook with a furious, violent confrontation.

  I dove headfirst into the darkness, barely lit by a covered oil lamp, just as Shona was thrown across the small space and thudded into a bulkhead. The lamp itself fell and splashed a burning sheet of oil across the deck, and flames leapt up. I grabbed Shona and almost threw her out of the door, and then turned to grab the boat’s ‘owner’. He charged past me, one huge, gnarled hand shoving me aside, then grabbed the back of my shirt, pulling me out of the smoke filled space.

  The man propelled me over the side, and I landed with a thud on the sand, followed shortly thereafter by Shona, who had tried to take him down again. Both of us were stunned by how fast everything had happened, and watc
hed in astonishment as a grey bearded, huge shouldered man started throwing things from the boat out onto the sand. Then he shook his head in disgust, climbing down and walking towards us.

  “Stupid lifers, look what you done to my boat,” he said, as it burned brightly in the background. He held the shotgun in the crook of his arm, ignoring our pistols. The big man shook his head, then turned away from the now bonfire and squatted down in front of us, ignoring the flames.

  “Why the fuck,” he asked casually, “does it happen that every time I get settled down someplace, an officer fucks everything up?”

  I holstered my pistol and motioned for Shona to put hers away, then held out my hand. “I’m not REALLY an officer, it’s only brevet. Sergeant Major Nick Agostine. Irregular Scout Team One.”

  “Well, you could have said so, and avoided all this goddamned trouble.” He spit in his hand and then crushed mine. “Master Sergeant, retired, Mike Bozelli. Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf War One, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a whole lot of other shitty places.”

  Then he turned to Captain Lowenstein and said, “Next time you try a Savate kick inside a confined space, you’re probably going to get yourself killed. Stupid kids.”

  Looking back at the boat, he muttered under his breath, tugged on his beard, pissed on the fire, then said to me, “Where to now?”

  Chapter 264

  “That is always,” I said, “the ultimate question.”

  He grunted something which I would come to understand was his expression of amusement, and said, “Forty two!”

  We both burst out laughing and Shona looked at us like we were crazy. “Do you know why we’ve been having so many problems this trip?” I asked her.

  “No, why?”

  “Because … I forgot my towel!” Bozelli and I started laughing even harder, and she gave us a scornful look.

  “Hello, like, undead? Bad guys?”