away from the Denver International Airport, by the afternoon we had made it to the station, we knew what was there, the 36th is an Aviation Brigade, which means it has helicopters, and it had done a few recon flights over the building, then they had come back and made strafing runs until it ran dry. They said there were a few left for us to mop up. They were wrong. The damned zombies just got under cover, or if they could not do that they just laid there pretending to be 'dead again', the details that can be seen from a helicopter are not that good for determining if a guy is faking it and just lying there or actually does have a head wound.'
'I know where we were told to stop was a four way intersection, between two major thoroughfares, each four lanes, plus turn lanes, I am talking a lot of room there. And there were bodies everywhere, the helicopter had done its job well, even sawed off a street light, clean as butter, I know because I parked right under it. We had to drive over bodies to circle the wagons, nothing was moving. You ever see what a twenty millimeter round does to a building?' shrugging again, Ted said, 'No? I suppose not. Anyway, for one thing calling a twenty millimeter shell a 'round' pretty much says it all. You know in the old world war two they had anti-tank guns that were that big? It is a round that used to be for taking out a fucking tank, and nowadays we run that size through machine guns on our helicopters, is that crazy or what? Anyway, you can just imagine what the surrounding buildings looked like, the bullets go through the walls, sometimes they collapse the building, sometimes they fly all the way out the other side and into the building beyond that. Sometime even through that other building. These rounds were fired from above so a lot of the angles were up to down, the streets were uneven and pocked, kind of puckered up, like Satan's mouth blowing raspberries at God.'
'I can't really say much about the fight itself, we were so far removed from it that most of it was over before it was obvious that we had lost. The tanks were overkill, a hundred and eighty millimeter shell is great against soft targets or infantry that could actually bleed to death from a fragment, against zombies? Tanks against zombie, well let's just say they didn't do that well.', shrugging yet again Ted went on, 'Our part of it was a bit chaotic. The column had split into groups as we were supposed to, our group was to be the reserve, just hanging back in case we were needed. This really met that we sat a a four way intersection and waited. The soldiers were getting a little edgy, and started screwing around a bit, but for the most part our group was in good shape. The other groups were in three columns with an old tank leading each one followed by a couple LAV's those nineteen ton 'Light Armored Vehicles' we spent so much money developing, then found out they aren't worth shit against a common mine or roadside bomb, remember that on the news? Anyway we had nine of those, two in each column and three in the reserve pool in case they were needed. There were no extra main battle tanks in the reserve. We have another tank in the platoon, it is still back at the base in the garage, undergoing maintenance.' Sergeant Ted paused in telling his tale and took a long pull from his canteen.
'Except for the LAV's we were the only unit with a mounted machine gun and we were positioned, once again, to watch our asses, make sure nothing crept up on us and to keep the way to retreat open. Hah! That is a joke, we drove right into them, not knowing what they were. We let them surround us completely and then we were surprised when they rose up off the ground almost in unison to attack us. At the same time the ones got up off the ground more rushed out of all those buildings. I saw this one guy, right before it started, at the urging of his buddies, creeping towards an open doorway, a dark open doorway. He got about eight feet from it and froze, after that, as my old drill instructor would say, 'the foul excrement hit the air moving rotary device'. The guy I saw by the door fired wildly into the building while turning around and running back to his buddies, they were laughing their asses off; I saw he had pissed himself, and keyed Tompson that they zombies were gonna hit us, that was all I had time for.'
'A second later the screaming started, the zombies got up off the ground and distracted us from firing at the ones rushing out of the buildings. The LAVs did well, we did fine, I thought we were going to make it. Then a good old fashion Molotov cocktail hit one of the IAVs, some of it must have gotten in through the rear deck too, got sucked into the air intakes, 'cause soon that thing was dead in the water. The men weren't dead, but they lost power and could no longer rotate the turret. The other two, and me, started moving our vehicles, instead of leaving them stationary for more accurate fire. Just in time too, 'cause more of the Russian specials came raining down into the trucks off the rooftops. They did not hit us, but a couple of them landed on the trucks where the infantry were fighting, which forced them to bail. What a choice huh? Burn to death or get eaten to death?'
Tompson did good work. No, he did great work with the machine gun, he didn't hit any friendlies, I know that, but he would walk that gun right up to them and back. The problem is, these god damned things have to be hit in the head to take them out, sometimes a shot to the spine will disable them, not always. Anyway Thompson's strategy seemed to be more along the lines of 'saw their legs off', one I approve of. I had to keep moving the hummer forward and back, to clear the zombies away from the doors. A Sanchez was busier than hell trying to keep the doors clear. He thinks he tagged one of our guys too. That would be as much my fault as his though, I was moving the vehicle and he had a limited arc of fire, and, as I said, things were bumpy with all the pock marks and bodies all over the ground.'
I watched zombies rip apart guys, full body armor or not, I saw men screaming for their buddies to shoot them in the head, to kill them and not let them be ripped apart by the mob. I saw horror. In a normal battle you kill a few people and the rest get demoralized and run away, it was always the other guy who broke too, after all who can face down the fire power of the good ole' US of A? We fired and fired, the infantry fired and fired, the LAVs were fucking priceless for the amount of shots they could pour out and here was our enemy, not even trying to take cover or shoot us back. And they demoralized us. No other words for it. They. Just. Kept. Coming.'
Ted got a faraway look in his eyes, then gathered himself together and continued, 'I also saw such courage as to make me cry. You know that some of the guys managed to form a circle using one of the trucks as an anchor and forming up around it, three guys in the bed, keeping zombies off on that side. Two guys were needed on the underside, at first, to keep the zombies from crawling under the truck. After five minutes the zombies were piled high enough to keep anymore from crawling through and they put one of the walking wounded there to shoot any more that squirmed through. Around the outside of the circle the bodies were getting higher too, some of the zombies though, were not dumb, they were taking cover or ducking into the buildings, I pointed them out to Sanchez as I saw them, I made one pass in front of the semi-circle to try and clear out the bodies, not a good idea in a soft skinned vehicle, a couple rounds got through from the guys and their rifles and Sanchez was like to die screaming and praying when a bullet snapped through his pant leg, didn't even touch him, just went through his pant leg. My pass made things a little better; I did manage to push a bunch of bodies into lower positions, to crush them with my tires. A few minutes later the bodies were piling up again. By this time all the survivors who were going to make it were in the semi-circle formed by the infantry, there were even a couple medics doing their jobs, with IVs and everything, it was surreal. The vehicles that were not part of the fortification kept circling so as not to get bogged down or overwhelmed, the marines were firing with everything they had. Thank God for small favors, the one truck they had formed up around was full of small arms ammo. Then again that master sergeant was one smart fellow, so I doubt luck played much role in his selection of trucks to defend.'
'When a zombie managed to firebomb the front of that truck I knew they were in trouble, the attacks increased in intensity, I remember a zombie jumping up on the hood with an iron bar, maybe a crowbar, he swung back and then his head disappeared when Thompson swung the gun around and let off one shot at point blank range. I was done then, wanted to bug out, fuck my friends, my fellow soldiers, it was time to go. The last of the reserve was feeling the same way, and they made a break for it after that rush. They were spearheaded by yours truly and the two remaining LAVs, some of them even made it out, including the sergeant.
'Of course, all the while the three columns were being hit too, screaming at the reserve to move up here or there, eventually I had the Major talking to me, asking where the hell the reinforcements were. I had to tell them they were dead, there were just the two LAVs, one with two flat front tires, the other with no ammo for its main gun, and us. He told us to bug out, load up who we could, then he gave the retreat codes over the radio. There was nothing much we could do. Our group survived, the LAVs drove turret reversed behind the main body of, oh, I dunno, maybe fifty guys on foot, we drove in front clearing the way and finding the path.'
'There were so many of them, it took us awhile to get to a point where we could stop and pass out some of our ammo to the other two vehicles. Between them they had two spare tires to get the LAV with the flat tires rolling again and we gave them each a third of the ammo we had carried up there. By now it was getting dark, we had been fighting a running retreat for four hours. I think the only reason we did not run into another ambush is that I was choosing turns randomly, never going with the easiest looking path, never going back the way we had come from, two of the best ways to avoid ambushes. Dark was a bad thing though, we had some night vision gear, the LAVs had it built in, the infantry's was in the trucks, so they had none, and they were running out of
