Zombie Corpse |
|||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
ZOMBIE CORPSE
A third place contest entry by Daniel Holmes
I didn't sign up for this. The commercials said 'see the world' and maybe make some extra money for college. I'd been stuck in the motor pool since I joined up and I don't even know anything about vehicles. I wanted to be a lawyer or at least an MP. Talk about military intelligence!
That all changed a few weeks ago. I was in the shop, trying to regrind an engine head. Private Kelly was manning the guardhouse and Private Thompson was in the tower. I heard Kelly's .45 fire. A few seconds later I heard Thompson's heavy weapon (I never was good with squad-level weapon names--Maybe it was a SAW?) light up. I thought we were under attack. Little did I know the world was about to end.
I ran outside, even though I knew I shouldn't--deserting my post and all that. Three dirty men dressed in rags were bent over Kelly. I could see blood pooling around his body. His sidearm was a few feet away, but the men didn't seem to be going for it. Thompson, still in the tower, kept yelling obscenities at the men crouched around Kelly. He was firing bursts to try and get them to disperse. They seemed to pay no attention to the bullets flying within a few feet of them.
As I approached the group, one of the men looked up at me. He had blood dripping from his mouth, and the rest appeared to be eating Kelly's throat and intestines.
It was then I realized I didn't have my sidearm--it was still in the armory. I lost it then and there. No matter how much training you get, once you come face to face with something like that, all bets are off.
Anyway, I woke up in the infirmary. I had been out for a few hours.The medic filled me in on what happened. Due to a chemical spill on the interstate, somehow the dead came to life. Don't ask me to explain it, I can't. He told me that if one of them bites you, you will come back within a few minutes. Kelly was a demonstration of that. Thompson had to kill his best friend. I'm not sure I could do the same in his case.
That was a few weeks ago. Life has returned to a routine. Sure, the dead are walking around, but our base is still heavily defended. The Rangers stationed here are now in charge of perimeter security. The D-Boys (don't call 'em Delta operators) work on recon and extraction of civilians trapped where they shouldn't be. Once every few days, the Rangers do the 'dead run'. Two guys take canteens of water and K-bars. They run the perimeter of the base, avoid the zombies, and make it safely back in the gate. The winner gets the other's pay for the week. If one of them gets taken by the zombies, they get a bullet in the head. Thompson discovered that is the only way to make sure they don't come back. So far, they have lost 3 guys doing that. Sick game if you ask me, but that's why I was never picked for Special Forces. They get entertainment where normal people would run screaming into the night. Their CO turns the other cheek--something about 'keeping their edge'.
We are pretty stable, compared to the rest of the area. The nearby city is pretty much empty--either the zombies got the residents, or they fled. We've taken in many civilians, and even had them take some of the jobs others had before they were killed or promoted. We have a guy who used to run a restaurant on the outside as our new mess cook-the food actually has a taste. The BX and PX have never run smoother--they have a guy who ran a shopping mall in charge of them. Having them run stuff like that has freed up our commanders to concentrate on the military problems at hand.
Now we wait. Communications still work to the outside, but with the state of the rest of the world, and the way the dead are spreading, we are on our own as far as reinforcements are concerned. We our own food supplies will last us several years, and we have our own water and power generation facilities. We are trying to conserve fuel and munitions, although small-arms ammo is pretty much open to anyone who wants it. Pilots run sorties to the outside, but they are mainly search-and-rescue operations rather than attack or intelligence gathering. It is too hard to tell who is a zombie and who is a living person with instruments--a freshly-risen zombie still shows up on IR. That's why the D-Boys have to go in and inspect every possible living person sighting. They rope in, extract as many live ones as they can, and take out every zombie they find. They have to be careful, though--it can get tough to tell the difference between someone walking slowly because of wounds or shock, and a zombie. One of them almost shot a little girl that had lost her parents a few hours before.
Every so often, a group of zombies tries to either break down the fence or get through the guardhouse. They don't realize the Rangers are right there waiting for them. They never seem to learn that fact either. It's amazing what a .50 cal bullet will do to a person's head. I don't know what is going to happen in the coming weeks, but I do know it won't be pretty for either side
|