Zoey and the Zombies (A Mondamin Court Adventure)

Chapter Thirteen #1

Raleigh, North Carolina

Charles Delayne, a newly minted colonel in the Raleigh Defense League, yelled at his men to pipe down and look sharp. Raleigh was a long way from Florida and the huge hordes of zombies roaming there, but it was unfortunately too close to the most recent outbreak in Fayetteville.

Compared to what was going on in Florida, a group of several hundred undead shuffling up Interstate 40 barely made the national news. The guardsmen who were supposed to be protecting Raleigh were holed up in Fort Bragg. The nearby town of Fayetteville had already fallen and the men at Fort Bragg were now behind the quarantine line, trying to fight their way out. Unless they succeeded soon, it would be too late for Raleigh.

Unified Command had sent some men—barely a full company of infantrymen with a half dozen light troop carriers. Just over a hundred soldiers armed with assault rifles against several hundred undead. Nobody outside of Command believed that to be enough.

The mayor had been worried enough to turn to a hodgepodge of gun clubs, survivalists, and anyone else willing to answer his call. Charles was proud to be one of them. They'd show the world what it meant to be American. They had an arsenal twice what the company had left with—assault rifles, semi-automatic machine guns, hunting rifles, and some of the best sharp shooters in town. Every man had brought backpacks and bags or crates of their own favorite brand of ammo.

Charles had commandeered a couple of semis with flatbeds. They had parked them across both sides of the interstate just outside of town. They would provide an ideal platform for the men to shoot from. He had the core of his sharpshooters—men from his gun club, men he knew and trusted—with him on this flatbed.

He positioned the rest of them, nearly three hundred strong, in the ditches and embankments on either side. The horde would wander into a death trap.

In the distance, they could still hear sporadic gunfire as the Army engaged the horde. The men listened and speculated on what was happening out there.

A scream interrupted Charles's reverie. Two men rolled down the embankment, wrapped in a death match. One of the men was heavyset, dressed in camouflage.

The other man, in jeans and a T-shirt, landed on top. He bent over the first man. Charles couldn't tell what he was doing until his head came up, the man's ear in his mouth.

"Zombie!" The shout went up and down the line, and men opened fire. The rain of bullets slammed into both men.

"Hold your fire," Charles bellowed through a bullhorn. He had to yell three times before the men stopped shooting.

Everyone stared at the two men lying still at the edge of the ditch. Slowly the man in jeans started to twitch and rise again. A single crack of gunfire broke the silence, and the man's head split open.

"Thank you, Donovan," Charles said.

"No problem," an older man with a thick, gray, handlebar mustache said and tipped his hat.

As the ringing of gunfire slowly faded, Charles could hear the man in camouflage whimpering softly, his body riddled with friendly fire. Charles's gut churned as he listened to it, but what was he supposed to do? The man was bitten. There was no saving him now. Besides, he could hear moaning in the distance.

There was a crack of gunfire from the opposite flank as someone spotted another undead in the woods.

Two of the half dozen armored troop carriers careened into view. They drove through the median to get between Charles's barricade and then stopped.

The colonel leaned out. "We're falling back hard," he shouted.

"We're not," Charles informed him. "We're holding this line."

The colonel swore. "Get yourself killed." He swore again and then ordered his men out. "I hope to God you know what you're doing." The remaining soldiers lined up with the rest of the men.

The first of undead arrived hard on the heels of the Army. In fact, the first one to come over the hill and into view was an Army soldier, newly converted. Recently reanimated, he moved faster than Charles would have expected. His sharpshooter friend, Donovan, dropped him in one shot before anyone else could react.

It felt like a good omen, but the battle quickly went downhill from there. The next three came over the hill together. A crackle of gunfire followed their advance, but head shots on a moving, wobbling target wasn't as easy as in the movies. The final one had crossed almost half the distance and lost both arms before someone managed to bring it down. More worrisome to Charles was the amount of ammo they had blown through for just three kills.

The next group was larger, nearly twenty of the undead beasts. They went down faster, but more were coming over the hill, and from that point on, the shooting never stopped.

For a long time, Charles focused on his own shooting. He heard the moaning and the crackle of gunfire and little else. He wasn't sure when the echo of human screams first joined the cacophony.

His gun grew hot in his hand. The case of shells at his feet drained. But what broke his reverie was the Army colonel grabbing him by his collar and shouting, "You're losing your flank, Commander." This last was drawn out in a sneer, showing his contempt for the civilian force.

Charles looked around. The few remaining men on the right flank were fleeing back toward the city. Already, shambling figures had reached the flatbed. They couldn't get up on it, but they reached for ankles nearer the edge.

Charles look around, torn between running after the cowards who were deserting their posts and trying to figure out a solution.

"We need to pull back," someone shouted.

"The fallback option is fast disappearing," the military colonel yelled. Already undead were shuffling behind the trucks, ringing them in. The road was strewn with hundreds of bodies, but more were shuffling forward. A few men were still firing. Others were throwing empty duffel bags, boxes, or crates of ammo out of the way, fixing bayonets, hefting axes, or fleeing the area.

"We need to fall back to the city, find more ammo," he yelled. Turning back, the number of undead behind the flatbed had grown, more than he would have imagined in the few short moments. Any easy escape was gone.

Looking past, at the city itself, several lines of smoke were rising. Sirens echoed in the distance. Charles hefted a machete, wondering if there was a city to fall back to. With a nod at his men, he led them into the fray.