“Okay Kenny, I am going to talk with Seth and get him calmed down, then we will get to Tom's mom and dad's farm to go to bed.”
“Okay. Tell Seth not to kick me in the jewels, that really hurt.”
“I will.”
Then Stewart's cry of “Zombie!” rang out and Max found himself lifting a shotgun he didn't even remember bringing with him.
“Hop in the back seat Kenny! Nick, Cory, Erin and Jessica, get in the van now!” Max called out as he came around to where Tom and Stewart were watching a zombie climb the embankment to the road. Another head appeared, then another, and another, soon dozens of the walking dead were shambling up and over the road towards them.
“Drive away?” asked Stewart.
“Yeah, no point in tackling this bunch. At least it looks clear on our side.” Max said.
“Okay Tom and I will lead and keep moving until we get to Tom's place, unless something changes.”
“What about Seth?”
“What about him?”
“He okay?”
“No Seth is definitely not 'okay'. I think he is autistic.”
“Kenny says Seth took medicine every day.”
“Fucking great. We should have checked that this morning before we left.”
Max shrugged his shoulders, “We didn't know. We can talk about what to do tonight. Looks like the dog likes you now.”
“Yeah, great. Probably just wants to see what my other leg tastes like. Let's get moving before we have to fight our way out of here.”
The four adults quickly moved back to their vehicles and hopped in. The foot odor in the van was still strong, but no one was suggesting they stay any longer. Putting his foot on the gas the minivan surged forward after the police cruiser into North Platte.
Chapter 12
The army believed in getting the men up early in the morning. Bill was not, by nature an early riser, so in this instance, his son John did better with getting up at five in the morning than he did. They had sent Will home with details of what had happened to them, along with both of their baggies of personal gear. The army took them with nothing and gave them every single piece of equipment and clothing they now had. 'Street Clothing' was confiscated and, if the rumors were true, burned. The zombies were coming, and the army did not have time to deal with deserters or six week long training programs. Team building was also secondary. Bill and John ended up in the same squad because they wanted to be in the same squad, along with them were eight other men from their town, including old Ruben Olson, who had been on the town council. The old man could not keep up with the younger men when it came to physical activity, but he could still fire a gun, which was all they needed. Plus the old coot had been in the army before and had seen some time in combat. Ruben, of all of them, knew how to game the system. When the squad was too tired to do things, Ruben had a breakdown and everyone had to stop. Ruben got them extra rations by 'forgetting' where he had put his, he pulled a couple other older men into the squad against at least two other men's protests and these men too, helped the squad out as a whole. The trio of old guys wheezed and moaned just enough that the officers had pulled the younger men aside one by one to tell them to look out for the old men. Once the entire squad knew what was going on, a process that took all of two days, everyone pitched in to make things look good for the brass, just good enough to get them out of kitchen patrol, the worst of the night watches and refurbishing rifles taken out of storage.
Training was to last ten days, with the possibility of it being cut short by three if the situation warranted it. The army was not pulling them in as regular troops, but as Iowa National Guard Militia. The 'militia' part was new, passed by legislation to indicate a streamlined training period that emphasized getting troops to the fronts as soon as possible. Of course the impossible job of the trainers was to make the groups of unruly men and boys follow orders without questioning them. This was key to functioning as an army and not as an armed mob. So far the complaining and 'mob' mentality was ruling the day.
The third evening the sergeants got together and had a meeting, leaving the corporals in charge of the squads. Bill didn't know what was going on, but as a corporal he suddenly found himself in command of the squad, he kindly suggest they use his reign to get some extra sack time and the squad heartily agreed, they had been woken up at three am for simulated 'night attacks' the previous morning and could use the rest. An hour into the squad wide nap the door to the nineteen fifties tent swung open and a group of twelve sergeants came in and woke them up. Their sergeant Mike Wilkes, stood at the back of the group, by the door, looking outside periodically. Another sergeant from a different platoon entirely stepped up with a laptop computer. He looked around at the half asleep men, all of whom had jumped up and stood at the foot of their beds when the door swung shut and said, “Alright soldiers. I expect to have less trouble with you than with some of the other squads. corporal, gather your men around so they can watch this.”
“Come on men, you heard the sergeant, let's take a look!” the men all moved forward to stand in front of the computer screen. The sergeant sat it on a stool and gestured for the men to sit down.
“We have some preliminary feedback from army units that have taken some 'volunteers' in with them at the front. This is out east. These men had three days training and were thrown at the front lines. Look what happens when they don't obey orders.”
What happened was a group of men, probably two platoons from what Bill could see, ran into a bunch of zombies. At first everything was going well for the humans, the zombies were being mowed down like wheat. Then the camera panned to the right flank where a non commissioned officer was telling the men to keep firing, but one man's rifle had jammed and he got scared and turned to flee. The sergeant ordered him to stop and return to his weapon, to hold the line. The man fled, his squad mates, still well back from the advancing zombies and still with plenty of firepower, started getting nervous. The sergeant sent the corporal after the lone man and ordered the others to pick up the pace.
The squad next to the one on the end saw two men running back and one of them immediately bolted, despite being ordered to hold the line. The camera panned back out to the approaching undead, there were still a lot of them, hundreds, but with the rate they were being hit the remaining soldiers could have handled them easily. Easily if the humans hadn't ran away. In the end half the soldiers there, about forty, were overrun because the other half had fled. The camera man was on some sort of vehicle and had filmed until the very end, firing his pistol as the zombies brought him down. The footage was graphic and violent, but nothing the men had not seen before in the course of their training. The short clip ended and the nameless sergeant pointed his finger at John and barked, “What happened here soldier?”
“Uh, the men ran away when they should have stayed?”
Bill cringed, he had learned that the sergeants hated nothing more than an answer that was phrased as a question, this one went easy on his boy and responded, “Is that an answer or a question? I asked what happened? Use your head man, this could be you out there!'
“The men disobeyed orders to hold the line and ran away. This resulted in high casualties that could have been avoided if they had just done what they were told to do.”
“Better. More mistakes than that were made here. You!” the sergeant pointed at a middle aged man name Gene, “What else went wrong?'
“When half the men left the officers didn't pull the rest of the men back.”
“Very good. You!” Ruben was the next target, “What would you have done if you were in command and the men started to run away?”
“Me? Well the non-comms tried to hold too much line, I think if they would have stepped back about fifty feet and re-formed into a tighter formation they could have still won.”
