Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (7 page)

Luke knew that Bobby wasn’t a sadist; he’d watched the ex-Ranger nearly vomit after stepping outside following an operation similar to the one he was describing now. He quietly reminded Jack of that fact, even though everyone had learned of the airport interrogation in the days after the Battle of Fort Wayne. Still, Luke didn’t want to hear the screams or see the blood again, so he supported Jack’s decision to conduct the interrogations without torture for the time being. Even Bobby seemed relieved when he heard that he wouldn’t have to use his knife unless nothing else worked. Marcus hadn’t said one word the entire time, and Luke was certain that the experienced soldier had no desire to take off any more fingers either.

David had been looking over the prisoners while the debate about finger-surgery was taking place, and he’d noticed that there was a big difference in appearance and demeanor between the pilot and crew-chief, and the soldiers manning the roadblock. The Blackhawk crew was young, clean-shaven, and sporting traditional military haircuts, while the guards were older men with civilian grooming and ill-fitting uniforms. When he shared his observations with the rest of the team, they noticed the differences as well. After Jack inspected the prisoners himself, he was fairly certain that the guards were some type of militia force while the chopper crew was regular Army. He strongly suspected that the interrogations wouldn’t be as difficult as his team members thought they would be.

Jack chose the youngest of the guards to speak with, while Carter went off to talk with the crew chief. The night had grown colder, and after spending half an hour away from their fire and sleeping bags the prisoners were all shivering. Jack picked up a wool blanket lying on the bridge near the campfire and gently wrapped it around the shoulders of the prisoner he had chosen to speak with. The man nodded his thanks before whispering, “That scary-looking dude ain’t really gonna chop off our fingers is he?”

Jack just raised his eyebrows and shrugged, “We were Rangers in Afghanistan together; he’s removed fingers from prisoners before.” He then flat-out lied, “But fingers are just the beginning if he doesn’t get the cooperation he wants. There’s a few Taliban in the world who’ll never make babies again.” Jack pretended to shiver as if he vividly recalled a horrible memory before he upped the ante, “You ever seen a castration before?”

The scruffy soldier looked
absolutely terrified and Jack attempted to calm him down by explaining, “Hey, he’s my buddy. If I tell him to lay off you, I’m pretty sure he will. Not many of us really want to see him go off, that’s why we’re trying to talk first.”

“Just tell me what you want to know,
man, I ain’t got any secrets,” the prisoner quietly declared through chattering teeth.

“Why are guys here?” Jack demanded.

“We were sent here to see if this bridge was clear and set up a roadblock if it was.”

“Who sent you here to do that?”

The prisoner thought for a moment, “Well, my squad leader told me to get on the chopper, but I’m guessing that Major Jackson ordered the mission.”

“Why do you say that?” Jack asked gently. “Who is Major Jackson?”

“That’s a long story, dude.”

“Hey,” Jack explained, “we have time. Start from the beginning.”

The prisoner let out a long sigh before finally explaining, “I ended up with a group of survivors holed up on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My girlfriend was a nurse working in a D.C. hospital, and she came home a few days after they brought those Marines back with the virus and told me we were leaving town. She didn’t tell me that she’d been bitten. We headed south on I-81 and made it to a hotel in Waynesboro. Had to stop there ‘cause she was getting really sick. She wouldn’t go to a hospital . . . turned the next morning and I took off.

“I was in a panic and headed toward the mountains instead of the interstate, ended up on the Blue Ridge Parkway heading south. Ran out of gas and coasted into a scenic overlook where a bunch of people had parked their RVs. They had plenty of supplies and most of ‘em were elderly; they were more than happy to have a younger guy around to help out.

“Anyway, we watched the Shenandoah Valley burn for two weeks, then waited another month before heading out of the mountains. We found a huge, ancient farmhouse set on a pretty steep hill we could defend, and that’s where we stopped. Crops were already in the ground and we planted every seed we could get our hands on. By late July we’d built walls and  had over a hundred people living there. That’s when the major showed up and said he was point man for a government relief force. When the choppers flew in the next day, we opened the gates, and that’s when we met General Barnes.”

Jack hid his excitement at hearing the name, encouraging his captive to continue by asking, “The medical guy who was helping the president?”

“I guess,” the prisoner shook his head as he explained, “but he ain’t working for the president now. He told us that he could keep the infected off us as long as we cooperated, and we didn’t really have a choice once we saw the valley fill up with thousands of the monsters. Within a few weeks we were farming for Barnes and his cronies. They were a bunch of assholes, so I jumped at the chance to join one of the militia platoons they were forming.”

The still-shivering man stared at his feet as he whispered, “I shouldn’ta done that.”

Jack waited a moment before gently prodding, “Why do you say that?”

“That crazy bastard, Barnes, he’s forcing every settlement he finds to surrender to him or he sends in his monster-army to kill everyone; I’ve seen the remains of one of the fights.”

The prisoner grew quiet again until Jack asked, “How did all that lead you to this bridge?”

“I can’t say for sure, but Barnes is moving that army of his through southern Kentucky right now. My guess is that he wants to make sure he can use bridges like
this one to get over the Ohio; the infected don’t like water.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “w
e’ve noticed that too. So you think he’s bringing the whole army this way?”

“He’s definitely headed north according to the scuttlebutt going around; word is he wants to get into Indiana and Ohio for some reason.”

“The whole army headed this way?” Jack inquired. “Should I get my people out of the area?”

The prisoner’s eyes grew large, “Hell yes! You guys n
eed to run as fast as you can—find an island or something. I’m telling ya’, you’ve never seen anything like this in your life. These creatures ain’t human anymore, and I swear there’s a million of ‘em. Well, not that many, but definitely tens of thousands . . . probably over a hundred thousand. And none of ‘em are damaged either. He’s got herds of cattle following along to keep the creature’s fed; live people are hard to find in these parts.”

“Well,” Jack promised, “w
e’ll run north and look for a place to hide. How long until this army gets here?”

The prisoner thought about that for a moment before shrugging, “Five, maybe six days. Could take a week, but I wouldn’t take that chance if I was you.”

Jack looked thoughtful before declaring, “I appreciate your honesty.”

“W
hat are you gonna do with us?” the frightened captive asked as Jack stood to walk away.

The tall soldier looked down at the cold, weary-looking militiaman, “I’ll let you know.”

Over the course of the next two hours all of the prisoners were interrogated, and all of them willingly shared everything they knew about Barnes and his army of infected. The Blackhawk crew was despondent, both with families still living at Fort Dietrick, but when Jack told them about the pilots already being held in Fort Wayne they agreed to answer every question asked of them. All of the stories shared by the captives matched closely enough that everyone on the team was convinced that Barnes was definitely headed north through Kentucky, and this bridge figured into his plans. What they couldn’t be sure of, however, was if the Brandenburg area was the only crossing point. Nobody could really envision how much space more than a hundred thousand hunters on the march would occupy, but Jack knew from history that forces of that size had often advanced on broad fronts, along multiple roads.

With the information they had available
, they decided to unpack the main radio and share what they knew with Fort Wayne and the second team operating near Louisville. The decision wasn’t without danger, as Barnes’ human troops almost certainly monitored transmissions. The messages would be sent by code, but the most damning information would be the location of the transmission, easily determined using techniques developed more than a century earlier.

Jack had already made several decisions that he wasn’t about to open to debate with the rest of the team, though he already knew that the only possible opposition would come from Carter. His best friend and second-in-command would eventually follow Jack’s lead, but there just wasn’t time for an argument right now. Jack h
ad decided, after gathering the intelligence on Barnes’ movements he so desperately needed, to hold this bridge as long as possible. 

CHAPTER 5

As expected, Carter was incredulous when he first heard of the decision to fortify the bridge and remain in place until Barnes arrived, but after hearing Jack’s reasons for holding the span, he had to admit that the plan had merit. The bridge would still be wired with enough explosives to render it impassable. The hunter army would not be crossing the Ohio River here. What Jack hoped to do was simply gain time for the war effort to build momentum. He needed thousands of troops from Utah, whose leaders fully understood they were much better off fighting Barnes in the east than allowing the crazy bastard to destroy all resistance as he advanced across the continent. If the hunter army cleared the Mississippi River, there was no significant natural barrier to their advance until they reached the Rocky Mountains. All of the western troops would have to be assembled from what had become a very regimented society, then moved by rail to the Fort Wayne area. Jack knew that every extra day the Utah government had to mobilize would increase the alliance’s chances of defeating the enemy.

Everyone on the team had been totally focused on keeping Barnes out of Indiana by blocking him at the Ohio River, but now that they knew his plans and general location, they realized that they were almost certainly going to be able to stop his northward advance. Jack was now
beyond simply worrying about the need to save his people and their hard-won settlement; now he was thinking of the future by considering the best ways to keep this army of hunters penned up in the southeast. The Ohio River simply grew bigger and stronger until it poured into the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. From there the continent’s mightiest river flowed unimpeded to the Gulf of Mexico. If Barnes could be kept from crossing those two rivers, he would be forced to abandon his army of experienced flesh-eaters and start over somewhere else. The war wouldn’t be won if the alliance could prevent Barnes from moving north or west with his current force, but critical time would be gained to build and improve the human army that would ultimately have to defeat the mad general.

Luke had immediately seen the plan unfold in his mind, where geography had been ingrained since the earliest days of his education. He also clearly saw the problems.

“Blowing all the bridges over the Ohio and Mississippi would be a lot of work for a pre-outbreak military force,” he pointed out. “How are we gonna get it done with the resources we have available?”

Jack nodded his understanding of Luke’s concerns as he explained, “We need more people in the air and on the water. Hopefully we can add the Blackhawk here to our little squadron. Before we left Fort Wayne
, I asked Ted Simmons and his railroad guys to see if they could push a locomotive south; hopefully they’ve found an open route this way. Chad’s unit can defend as well as any force we have available, and I know they’ve been chomping at the bit to get a shot at Barnes. We’ll ask him to bring his fighters here to the bridge.

“As soon as we know we have reinforcements on the way and the bridge is ready to blow, Carter will lead Marcus, Bobby, and David on down the river. I’m gonna ask Lori to organize another bridge-blowing team and have them flown down ASAP.
”

He looked at Carter before continuing, “
You guys can head on down the Mississippi while she takes care of all the destruction; we really need to know what’s going on along that river.”

At this point David interrupted, “So you’re saying that we just switched from trying to save our asses to fighting for the entire country? You know I have a baby on the way, right?”

In some ways Luke was closer with David than Jack was, and he answered the question first. “We’ve always been fighting for the country, David, the whole world, actually. Your baby will never survive if we don’t stop Barnes. Sooner or later he’s gonna get his shot at us. Do you want to fight that battle in Fort Wayne or along the Mississippi?”

Da
vid grew quiet, but his jaw twitched rhythmically before he released a long breath. “You’re right, but it’s a lot for me to digest so quickly. I guess if we lose in the south, Christy and everyone else will have the time to evacuate down the Maumee and try their luck on the Lake Erie islands.”