Discovery

“Good give it to Dan and get on the radio to Jenkins, tell him we fell back to the secondary position and….What?” Bill stopped seeing Jerome shaking and turning pale.

“I…”

“What?”

“He doesn't have the radio.” said Ruben.

“What?”

“I didn't mean…I just…I was getting the rifle unjammed and you said to fall back and I fell back and I forgot it.” the man said. looking miserable.

“Shit.”

“Not to worry sarge, I'll get it.” and before Bill could say a thing Ruben was running down the tracks back the way they had come from.

“Jerome! Cover Ruben!” Bill ordered, then he started firing at any zombies he could see coming towards the old coot as he ran back to their last position. “Matt, Javier, that is Ruben out there, give him some supporting fire!” Bill turned back to keep an eye on the trio of presumed humans that had been on the southern end of the mob, but he could not spot them anywhere.

Ruben's rifle fired from down along the edge of the field where they had been, they saw the flashes of the shots as well as heard the retort of his rifle. The slow moving zombies had to have passed the area they had first held by now, Bill thought, holding his breath as more gunfire rang out.

'God and country. God and country.' Ruben thought as he swerved over to the tree line from the railroad embankment. 'Why am I out here running like an old fool?' Bullets whizzed by him close enough to catch, were he so inclined, and he pushed through the first, faster zombies as he made his way back to the position where Jerome had left the pack. There, the backpack with the radio unit was on the ground at edge of the barbed wire fence. Several zombies had already tumbled over the fence pushed from behind by the others. Ruben held off on taking a shot until he was at point blank range then he fired one shot at a time, making each one count. He had just moved out of sight from his squad, they could not provide him with covering fire unless they moved up, which 'Sergeant Bill' wouldn't do, he was a good man, but green as the summer grass in the ways of tactics. Even calling him a 'Sergeant' was a stretch for a man like Ruben who had fought the Viet Cong in the jungles of south east Asia for two tours of duty. A real sergeant would have eaten Bill for breakfast and gone back for seconds and thirds. The way these kids were coddled today, standing around with their hands out waiting for money to go buy their video games and drugs! They were learning better now, weren't they? Ruben ducked under the slow swing of a zombie and came up to the tree where the backpack lay, he snatched it up and fired his gun one handed at the closest zombie while another got a grip on his shoulder and started to pull the old man towards his gaping maw. The zombies he was fighting were a horrifying array of shapes and sizes. Being an old Swede himself Ruben didn't pay much attention to color, but fat zombies and naked zombies stood out.

“You young hippie, you won't get me that easy!” Ruben yelled trying to pull his rifle around, but another zombie grabbed the barrel. Firing a burst didn't get the thing to let go of his rifle; it had no feelings in its hands to burn as the barrel heated up. The female holding his gun had been an attractive young woman before something had gotten to her face and the side of her neck. The zombie who had eaten off of her had taken her ear, cheek and part of the flesh along side of her left eye, leaving a gaping dark wound that dribbled a black, inky liquid down her naked torso. Ruben was no innocent recruit when it came to dirty fighting, his skills may have seen fifty years of dis-use but he still had them. If the zombie would not let go of a heated rifle barrel there were other things he could do. Instead of trying to swing the barrel sideways to aim it, he pulled it straight back, angling the butt of the gun at the young zombie's head who was trying to gnaw on his shoulder, the butt hit the younger zombie's head with a crack, but had the drawback of pulling the other zombie into Ruben. The other zombie, the 'hippie' in Ruben's mind, was also young, but must have outweighed Ruben by a two to one ratio.

The young man had no visible wounds on him, his clothing looked unsoiled and it was only his opaque eyes and awkward movement that made him stand out as a zombie. His flabby arms were bare, he had on some sort of a cotton t-shirt with the arms torn off and some black pants that looked like denim. Around one leg was a bandana, which Ruben didn't think was hiding a bite mark and the thing's feet were bare, hence the 'hippie' moniker. The zombies straining against the barbed wire of the fence came in all sort of shapes and sizes, one looked like a greaser from Ruben's era, another sort of resembled Burt Reynolds during his 'Smokey and the Bandit' days. All in all Ruben thought there were simply too damn many of the things and if he were going to live to bring the radio back that he had better make a decision on what to do.

Clutching the backpack Ruben decided it was worth more than his gun, he dropped the weapon and took off back through the woods, pausing just long enough to pull a grenade from his belt and toss it back into the crowd milling about at the fence line. Not every soldier was issued grenades, in fact only Bill and Ruben had them, they were not effective against the living dead. Both the non commissioned officers had received a fifteen minute seminar on the appropriate time to use the devices. Thinking back on it Ruben realized this was not one of the times, he shrugged and jogged up the rail road embankment, trying not to break his ankle on the large stones making up the base. Behind him the hippie's foot came down on the hand grenade just as it went off. The hippie was blown into a hundred different pieces, but was not dead, the body with one arm and his head still attached flew upwards through the trees, over Ruben's head and into the woods on the far side of the rail road tracks. The half naked gnawed on zombie woman was torn in half by the grenade as she turned to follow Ruben up the hill, one of the pieces of shrapnel entered behind her ear and torn out the front of her face near her good eye, she fell silently never to rise again. Two of the zombies by the fence were also struck with pieces of the grenade in the head and stopped moving, dozens more suffered lesser wounds, which did nothing to slow them down. The explosion also cut the top wire of the barbed wire fence, causing a cascade of zombies to fall over into the light woods where the squad's first line of defense had been. Recouping and standing up the zombies who had been knocked off their feet by the blast poured through the half torn down fence like a wave.

Ruben continued stepping carefully from rock to rock as he picked his way up the railroad bed. The old man was wheezing heavily, but making steady progress. A zombie moving faster than Ruben, ran towards him after springing out of the woods about twenty yards behind him. The pursuer had probably been older than Ruben when he turned, but the ancient corpse was not worried about breaking an ankle on the head sized stones that made up the base of the tracks. The zombie was gaining steadily on Ruben, despite the clear ichor coming out of its eyes making it half blind and the fact that it wore some sort of casual slippers on its blue tinged white feet. There was nothing the old man could do, the thing was as fast or faster than he was. Ruben tossed the pack up to the top of the hill by the tracks and pulled his combat knife from his belt. The old zombie was two feet from him when it was hit by multiple gun shots from by the rail road tracks, one of the shots sprayed blood and foul smelling brain matter all over Ruben's face.

The old man wiped his hand across his face to clear his eyes and started to climb up again as the Sergeant and two other soldiers gave him covering fire.

“I figured we would have a better angle if we moved out of position.” Bill said.

Ruben nodded, “And thank you for that sarge. I think you might have saved my life.” he said with more respect in his voice.

“You looked like you had things under control.”

“Maybe. I would rather not get into a situation like that again.”

“Next time we send Jerome back, it was his radio, his responsibility.” said Bill.

“You are probably right, we coddle these kids too much these days, they got to learn to fix their own mistakes. Old men like me can't be bailing them out every time they have a problem.”

Bill nodded and continued firing into the sparsely spaced trees. “I heard your grenade. Thought you might have, well, you know.”

“Me? No, not me, not that. I will fight until the end.”

“Yeah I saw that.” Bill offered one of his grenades to Ruben, Sergeants were issued two of the six pound explosives, Corporal's only rated one each, “Lost your rifle too. Damn.”

“Down two guns, three with John gone.” said Ruben taking the grenade from Bill.

“He hasn't come back yet.”

Both men turned to listen to the gunfire to the north of them. “He might be busy with problems of his own. I hope he is okay Sarge.” An explosion sounded from the north, as one of that squad's grenades went off. Bill