from the central panel, I think Tim has a key and knows how to do that, he can shut the maternity ward off on the second level and shut the doors between radiology and the ER on the ground floor, there are not any doors between the cafeteria and the main entrance, but the other ground floor rooms can be cut off. We had a problem with one of those doors locking once, it was a big deal, had to call in a contractor, patients and doctors had to go up the stairs and down the other side to get to rooms, it was a big mess….Sorry! I didn't mean to go on there, uh, yeah we can mostly do it, except for the cafeteria, the stairway exits all open out and can be locked from this side, nothing would get through, but we could get out.'
'Okay, we can build more barricades to seal off the cafeteria from the main entrance better, we already got one up, but it is pretty flimsy. Why don't you go ask Tim about it and get stuff locked down now John? And thanks for your help.'
John got up to go, saying, 'No problem' and as he left Juan could not help but wonder at how smoothly that had been handled by Jack. Ever since the group came in, Jack had been a little edgy and Juan was pretty sure it was because of the Guardsman, Juan recognized what Jack did as a way to get the kid out of the room so Ted could talk to them in private. Jack waited until he heard the door at the end of the hallway clang shut and then turned to Juan again, 'We may have a problem.'
'Si? I got that, what?'
'Bad news from Sergeant Ted, I am afraid. You guys saw how the road was cleared and how there were a few body bags here and there as they did it?' Juan nodded, 'Well, the military was trying to go and relieve that dj, who is holed up in his building, broadcasting instructions and news on how to deal with the zombie threat, well, shoot, I better let him tell it.' Jack cast a glance at Ted and nodded.
Ted spoke for the first time, his voice was gravelly and not unlike Hank's in many ways, he said, 'We are from the depot between Colorado Springs and south Denver, near Larkspur. My unit, part of the 36th Infantry Division, was attached to the 36th Aviation Brigade, a National Guard unit, when this mess started we were equipping for rotation in the middle east, we had three days to go until we shipped, that would have been, why today! Anyway we were confined to base to keep some of the younger guys from going AWOL at the last second, usually by having car trouble or drinking so much they passed out or getting into a bar fight and thrown in the drunk tank the night before, there has been a real problem since the wars started. So we got to sit on the base and almost mutiny before the army gave us our orders. This whole thing took the military by surprise, I can tell you that! A foreign war on foreign soil, sure, but a horde of zombies in our own back yard? How can we fight that?'
'Well yesterday we were ready to do it, break out and go home, find our loved ones and kick some zombie ass. We were ready to go with or without official sanction, then word comes down of a mission that might do more good, rescue one guy, a hero of sorts, and use rescuing him as a reconnaissance mission to plan future attacks into the city to rescue other pockets of humans still alive. None of us liked it much, we all wanted to rescue our families and check on our friends, however in the military they train you to know that ten individuals are not as effective as ten men working as a team. This was a military situation; our country is being overrun, even if our foes were unconventional and unarmed. A few lectures by our superiors and most of us bought into the strategy, even if we did not like it. Plus, I have to admit, we were afraid, the only news we got was from the dj, and according to him there was a sea of zombies around and in his building. What could we do alone?'
'So we spent a restless night griping and getting what rest we could. I think all of us planned to take our vehicles and head out on our own when we reached town, most of us are from up and down the front range, maybe twenty percent are from down south where the unit is 'Officially' stationed, Texas and Oklahoma. My two guys, in the humvee were from Aurora, like me. We thought we'd scope the situation, get this Blake guy first, then head east to get our families. A humvee can hold eight easy, and we had a total of eight family members to go and find. Not a coincidence, but a stroke of luck that we were one of the 'short' vehicles. The plan was to go in rescue any civilians we could, take down as many zombies as we could, at least put a dent in their numbers and then get the hell out. We had tanks, a couple of the 'Interim Armored Vehicles', the newer ones, with the turreted twenty millimeter guns that can be slaved to take down aircraft, like on those navy ships, you catch that in the news a year or so back?'
Jack and Juan shook their heads 'no', Ted shrugged his shoulders and continued,
'Oh, that is a sight to see, works great with drones anyway and they have some anti-missile capabilities too. Anyway they mount a twenty millimeter 'main' gun, and an M2 fifty caliber machine gun, same gun we have on the humvee
Then they loaded us up with ammo, an extra quarter ton of the fity caliber rounds, three extra cases of belt fed twenty millimeter ammo for the IAVs and two cases of the hundred and five recoilless rifle high explosive rounds. Plus we had two fifty gallon drums of fuel and medical supplies. Not much fucking room in there with that garbage loaded up. No problem, we knew how to deal with excess. Heck it ain't like any of us were going to have docked pay or worry about a court-martial.'
'So we climbed in our M1132 humvee, I was in command and I put Thompson on the turret with the old fifty caliber and Sanchez on shotgun. Thompson didn't have to be up and out for the ride, so we chatted about our plan on the way up from Larkspur. It would be cake to do a fade out and we wanted to go back to the base, there were no zombies there, we hadn't even seen one until we hit Castle Rock. Me and the boys only saw dead ones until we got into the Tech Center. Oh and we were the tail too, we rode about a klick behind the last vehicle with orders to call in if we saw anything creeping up our ass. Mostly we were supposed to be there for re-supply, something we would not need, I mean the zombies didn't even have guns and could not fight back, right? We were a wasted resource and fading to get our families would be no big deal, especially on the way back.'
'Well when we hit Denver everything slowed way down, we had major, I am talking major crashes to content with, we were lucky to make four clicks an hour with all the moving we had to do, I guess the Major was not so stupid after all, to have brought up our heavy movers and equipment. We heard the gunfire at the front of the column before we saw any hordes of zombies, the scuttlebutt that came back to us was that the zombies were hiding in wrecks or on overpasses, or coming up the ramps at us when we stopped. I ordered Thompson into position, it should be a cake walk, the new lightweight cupolas are real effective against small arms and fragments and our enemy didn't even have guns. He wasn't worried, I wasn't worried. Still when that first mob came up the on ramp at us they made it all the way to the rear bumper before he stopped them. You ever see what a fifty caliber bullet does to a man? This gun can plow through cement walls about a foot thick with the armor piercing rounds, the standard rounds we were using don't have quite that penetrative power, but when they hit.' the sergeant made a ka-plowing sound with his mouth while opening a fist with one hand, 'when they hit, they make great big holes in things. Especially meaty things.'
The zombies were not stopped though, they kept on coming over their dead, the slow rate we were moving kept the rain of bullets just beyond the back of the vehicle and then some of them hit us from the side. I was never happier to have Sanchez than yesterday, he knows how to work his AR-3. He muzzled it out of the firing port on his side and kept that clear and I used my pistol out of my side. Sanchez had to squirm into the back to shoot out of my side, he ended up staying there for the rest of the trip. Because he could hand Thompson ammo from there too.'
Anyway by the time it ended we had burned up half our allotted fifty caliber rounds, and most of our small arms ammunition. The Major had us catch up to the tail and we got more small arms ammo out of an actual supply truck. He told us it was 'open' firing too, but not to waste ammo on things that were not heading towards us or were too far away to be a threat. We took extra small arms ammo, a triple load and I grabbed a rifle off the truck too. Normally the driver just carries their side arm, the army doesn't want a driver getting his crew killed because he is not paying attention to his job: driving. I took the rifle, just in case.'
We had taken our first casualties then too, while we were fighting off the zombies at the rear, others had been bushwhacked all up and down the line. This was our first clue that someone was planning the attacks against us. I mean people just don't attack at the same time, unless they are ready to do so, this was not a case of 'Fred Zombie' hearing gunfire and coming over to join the fray, this was a case of three hundred and fifty 'Fred Zombies' waiting until they were given orders to run up the ramps and attack us. A lot of the guys were just in trucks, not even humvees, the trucks just had canvas walls and no guns mounted. They took it the worst we had maybe thirty left in body bags, all with a bullet into the brain, as most of them had come back during the fight, now if anyone died, we were to put a bullet in their brains first thing.'
We made steady progress into town, the God damned radio station is in North East Denver, a rifle shot
