Darkest Night Chapter 1

A little something I cooked up for the guys at Zombie Squad. Part of a new story that will go one until I run out of ideas. Inspired by Max Brook's World War Z. Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Darkest Night

The moaning grew louder. The rustle of bare feet came closer.

The horde had found us.

We would have left by now, the town we were in we had already stripped of supplies. If it wern't for the survivor we had found in the diner. Her name was Elaine. She was locked in a closet, scared, alone, with both legs broken. It was pretty obvious that some raiders had kidnapped and raped her, but the raiders must have been overrun and killed, leaving her there. The broken windows and spattered blood evidence of that.

We found a nice stache of weapons from the slain raiders to help defend ourselves; a couple shotguns, an assault rifle, some remote explosives and a few hundred rounds for each weapon. The girl was a mess though.

Rogers put her legs in splints and patched her up. She was so wild though we had to sedate her first. The raiders really messed her up.

Patty and the College Boy set up barricades around the police station where we will hole up tonight. I got Cookie to make us some dinner with a deer I shot on the way here. Though it looked like it had been contaminated, the virus dies in animals after a few hours. We have Father Patrick to thank for this knowledge.

Father Patrick investigated the area and took blood samples. He found a few slain zombies who had been decapitated and ran an autopsy. Since the outbreak, the Vatican had been sending out agents to try to find the cause of all this mayhem, Father Patrick was one of those agents. He came here to the former United States as one of the few to be deployed to the Americas; he was the last of his team. A warrior in his own right, he carries around a medieval battleaxe in one hand and his Bible in the other. He’s a specialist in human biology but not really part of the group We met him nearly a year ago and it’s a wonder he still puts up with us.

After the outbreak, the world was thrown into panic. Nations crumbled and people died and rose from the dead in the millions every day. The U.S. Government decided to sacrifice half the population and abandon the East Coast, re-establishing itself under martial law west of the natural barrier of the Sierra mountains. Other governments still exist, but we largely are on our own.

A year after the outbreak, a special corps was formed to scout out the areas east of the sierras to locate pockets of survivors and track major migrations of the infected so they can either be eliminated or at least kept an eye on with our remaining satellites. Teams like my own were dispatched for this purpose. The official name for us was United States Outer-Ring Scout and Assault Corps (USORSAC). We called ourselves Zombie Bait. I’m the Captain of Alpha Squad 23 in the 1st ZB Division.

Since we were deployed, I’ve lost half the men and women under my command. First Sgt. Patty, PFC “Cookie” Francis and Medical Specialist Rogers are the only remaining members of my team. We’ve picked up a few volunteers from survivor holdouts like College Boy McCormick, but most of them die pretty quickly. College Boy has managed to survive for a month and a half, he lost his buddy last week and he’s been deathly silent since. But the guy works hard and he’s a genius to boot. He even modified the squad’s SIRs (Sustainable Infantry Rifle). The SIR takes any easily found elements, scrap metal, wood, dirt, even ice and uses a micro-fusion factory to turn these basic elements into ammunition. Problem is its so unpredictable and breaks down more than a little. Hence “Sustained”. McCormick managed to fix that though, planning to send his designs back home once we get to the next USORSAC outpost on the outskirts of Washington D.C. Father Patrick was quite a find though, functioning as our chaplain and a good clench-man. He has saved my behind on more than one occasion. Even says he’s nearly found a way to cure the infection. Besides a bullet to the head of course. I’ve reassigned our squad from recon to research to help Patrick find this cure, wherever he goes, we go as an escort.

But tonight is all about survival. The zombies are pretty scarce in this town; only had to deal with three of them when searching for supplies but we’ve been followed by a horde for the last three days. While they can see you perfectly well in the daytime, the infected prefer to attack at night. I wouldn’t have believed it but they have a kind of collective memory according to Patrick, allowing for these large groups to use basic tactics, like attacking at night when we can’t see them. Zombies don’t need to use their sense of sight, I’ve been attacked by more than one who had rotten balls of sludge where their eyes were. They don’t seem to even have any control over their senses, this is one of the mysteries Father Patrick is trying to answer.

So windows need to be boarded up, upstairs and down. Always need a fallback position so we’re going to use the jail in the basement. Lock ourselves in the solitary confinement cell and light gas cans outside the door with a fuse. Zombies come in, cans explode, zombies die, we don’t. It’s pretty simple but the horde is at least 500 strong, we might have to fight our way out afterwards…

The jeeps will be kept in a nearby garage, hordes are smart enough sometimes to disable them. We have some close-combat lopers, pretty much a beefed up machete but I hope we won’t have to use them. Betty and College Boy will be upstairs to watch the killzones for our explosives operating the detonators and provide vertical security from jumpers. Myself, Rogers and Cookie will be at the front of the building, falling back inside once the zombies get within 20 yards. Father Patrick refuses to take orders but he usually fights alongside me. He disaapeared once it started getting dark along with the raiders weapons. He does this a lot, but sometimes he neglects to come back. We always catch up with Patrick by the next day though.

The girl has been put to sleep and locked in the confinement cell. She’s the reason we can’t leave yet, Rogers in afraid she would destabilize in her condition, and even though I’ve seen scores of men and women and children die from these things, Part of me wouldn’t let me abandon her.

It was only after leaving the jail that I realized she just went from one locked closet to another. Funny how the world turns out.

And then night fell.

No moon, not even any stars. A storm moved in just before we came into the town. There’s a little lightning but all it does is light up the faces of my squad, shadows making us almost look like the infected.

Through the rain and thunder, we heard the horde approaching.

The moans come first, echoing from the hills and buildings.

Then the scrape of skin and broken bone on asphalt and dirt.

They were coming from the highway.

I called on my radio to Patty, “Hit the lights, highway.”

The spotlight flickered on, illuminating the highway approach. God there were a lot of them. They were a writhing mass of flesh and gore, rolling over on itself down the highway. Some had missing body parts, arms, legs, pieces of their face, all of them covered in blood and gore. Most of them were clothed, sweatshirts, jeans, suits, even a bride and groom. The groom was missing his jaw and her mouth was bloody. I saw one later that night who was wearing USORSAC fatigues. I collected his dogtags after shooting him down.

Rogers was always disturbed by the sight of them, insists there all still people in there. When we first deployed I had a hell of a time getting him to fight until I locked him in a room with one of them. He eventually used his weapon after trying to reason and grapple with it at the same time.

But now, his tendency has returned. There was a little girl who had been infected and barely scratched at the front of the group. I had to tackle him to keep him from running to the girl.

And then the first of the explosives went off. The girl and those next to her were engulfed in flame. I saw a few bodies go flying towards us, landing only a few yards away. The burning zombies didn’t even notice the flames, they just got up and started walking towards us again. I slammed Rogers into the ground again as I shot at them from a prone position, one in the head, another, and another. The explosives continued to go off, blowing apart zombies and setting them on fire. Though apart from initial damage from the explosion, the fire doesn’t hurt them much. We mostly use it so we can see them better. Plus it looks awesome.

By the time the final set of explosives had been set off, they were about half their original number. Maybe down to 400.

Cookie began systematically firing at them, repeating his mantra: “One down, a million to go.”

I lifted Rogers onto his feet, placed his gun back in his hands, pointed him at the zombies and said “Shoot the bastards!” I started firing as well.

They were coming to fast though, for every one I shot, there were three more who filled in the gap. We started falling back to the door