Dead America The Northwest Invasion | Book 8 | Dead America: Seattle [Part 6]

  DEAD AMERICA

  THE NORTHWEST INVASION

  BOOK 8

  SEATTLE PART 6

  BY DEREK SLATON

  © 2020

  CHAPTER ONE

  Day Zero +26

  “This looks like another fun one,” Sergeant Farley declared as he looked out over the high school ahead.

  Located on the southernmost tip of Lake Washington, the suburb of Renton played a strategic role for the invasion of Seattle. The 405 interstate came up from Tacoma, through the densely populated suburbs to the south of the city, leading straight up towards the eastern front of the war.

  Initially, the fifteen thousand troops that had been sent around Tiger Mountain State Forest were being sent further south to Tacoma to create a blockade so that the eastern troops could do their thing. The mission had changed on the previous day, when the order came down to divert thousands of troops back to the north towards Renton.

  The push had been difficult, with the streets jam-packed with zombies. Four miles to the east of Renton was the East Renton Highlands suburb, a densely packed residential area that they were having a difficult time pacifying. The fighting had been brutal, street to street, with many of the troops having to resort to hand to hand combat due to the bullets running out.

  “Two stories, looks like it stretches for the entire block,” Private Santos muttered as he appraised the Hanzen High School, “and with our luck it’ll be another one of those ‘safe zones’ that they set up when things were going to shit.”

  “What’s wrong, buddy?” Private Sawyer asked, clapping his companion on the shoulder. “You aren’t in the mood to wipe out a couple hundred of those things?”

  Santos just grunted in reply. Their supply lines had all but been cut, as the aid had been sent to the larger southern force, leaving these troops short handed. They’d begun using vehicles, dumpsters, and even furniture to block off roads and give themselves a fighting chance against the ever-growing ranks of the undead.

  Santos bent over to pick up a five-foot tall metal post that looked like it had been ripped away from a chain-link fence. On one end, there was grey duct tape that had been wrapped around for a handle, the other end crudely filed down into a spike. The first two feet of the tip was already stained a dark crimson color.

  “Even if I was properly equipped, it would suck,” Santos said. “But being forced to use discount brand fencing just…” He sighed heavily. This was his first time seeing any action, either before or after the apocalypse, and he’d never in his wildest dreams thought he’d be caught in a zombie battle in the middle of a bullet shortage.

  Sergeant Farley squared his shoulders. “Santos, do you hear that?” he asked calmly.

  The Private furrowed his brow. “Hear wh-”

  Farley interrupted him, reaching out and covering his teammate’s mouth with his palm. “Shh,” he said. “Don’t talk, just listen for a moment.”

  Santos listened as the Sergeant lowered his hand. All he could hear was the smattering of gunfire in the distance, as well as faint yelling. The main part of the battle still raged, this rag tag cleanup crew sweeping buildings on the outskirts.

  “I… I don’t know…” he stammered.

  “You don’t know what you’re hearing?” Farley asked, voice cold. “Let me tell you.” He fixed his steel gaze on the young Private. “What you’re hearing are the front-line troops fighting far more of those things than we’re going to face in here, and they’re just as poorly equipped as we are.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Now, if you like, I can have you transferred over to them, because from the sounds of it, they could use the help. Or, you can stay here, fighting in controlled conditions with people you trust.” He raised his chin. “What’s it going to be?”

  Santos took a deep breath and schooled his expression. “I’m with you, Sergeant.”

  “Good,” Farley replied, clapping his hands together. “Have you figured out an incursion point yet?”

  The Private’s brow furrowed. “I thought that was Sawyer’s job?”

  “We’re in the middle of a war,” the Sergeant said. “One slip up, one bite, and Sawyer isn’t around anymore.”

  Sawyer barked a laugh. “That’s a comforting thought,” he quipped.

  “When that happens, it’s the next man up,” Farley continued, unfazed. “So you’d better know how to do his job after he’s gone.”

  Sawyer raised his hand. “Again, comforting thought,” he drawled. “Can just feel your confidence in me oozing out of you, Sarge.”

  Farley didn’t react, knowing the Private was more amused than upset as his demise being casually tossed around.

  “Okay,” Santos said slowly. “Well, we checked the classrooms on the south side of the building, and they were pretty jam packed. Like they were housing survivors before they knew about the blood type thing. We couldn’t see into the gym, but heard some moaning and smacking at the door, so that’s no good. A few of the classrooms on the north side had minimal resistance, but the most viable entry point was the front office.”

  “Okay, why’s that?” Farley asked, crossing his arms.

  Santos held up a finger. “Well, no enemies inside for one,” he replied. “Easy access to the main hallway.”

  “Good,” the Sergeant said, nodding. “What else?”

  “There’s an interior door at the office,” the Private continued, “so if we get inside and get overwhelmed, we would have a viable escape route.”

  Farley cocked his head. “But why not go in through the broken back door we put a makeshift blockade on?” he asked.

  “Well sir, we don’t know where that leads to, as there are no windows nearby,” Santos pointed out. “We also don’t know how long it’s been open, so there could be a ton of those creatures in there. It’s safer to go in through the office.”

  The Sergeant nodded. “Good job,” he declared, and then turned to Sawyer. “What do you think?”

  The Private scoffed playfully. “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t aware I was back to the land of the living just yet,” he teased, but then nodded. “But yeah, Santos nailed it pretty good.”

  “All right then,” Farley said. “When the others get here, we’ll get to clearing.”

  Sawyer looked past his Sergeant, nodding to the area behind him. “Speak of the devil,” he said.

  Farley turned around to see the rest of his team casually walking up, carrying a wide assortment of melee weaponry. Corporal Barnes led the way, with Privates Burton, Graves, Logan, and Wilcox following behind. Wilcox and Logan were both coated in blood, but it wasn’t bothering them.

  “How did the clearing go?” the Sergeant asked.

  Barnes shrugged. “Routine.”

  “Routine my ass!” Graves barked. “There were twelve of those fuckers jam packed into a two-bedroom house!”

  Logan nodded vigorously. “It was like a slumber party of the dead.”

  Sawyer appraised Wilcox and Logan, who were coated in blood from head to toe. “Looks like you two drew the short straw,” he drawled. “Red’s a good color on you though.”

  Logan wrinkled his nose and dropped a pile of material on the ground. Wilcox just grinned and spread his arms.

  “Don’t you do it,” Sawyer warned, holding out a hand.

  Wilcox took a step forward. “Oh come on, big guy, you know you want a hug!” he teased.

  “No, no, no,” Sawyer demanded, both palms out now, “I swear to god!”

  “Look around,” his companion said, cocking his head, “god can’t help you.” He
darted forward, and Sawyer leapt away, his blood-soaked friend chasing him around to give him a bear hug.

  After a few moments of tearing around, Wilcox finally caught him and gave him a good squeeze, picking him up off of the ground.

  Sawyer groaned in disgust as the others laughed. “I hate you so much,” he whined as his friend put him back down on the ground.

  Wilcox grinned and gave him a playful wet smack on the forehead. “Love you too, buddy,” he drawled. “Love you, too.”

  Farley stared down at the pile of materials on the ground. It was a wide variety of stuff, shovels, a pitchfork, and a six-foot wide section of chain link fencing amongst the pile.

  “You… you brought a fence,” the Sergeant said, raising an eyebrow.

  Barnes shrugged. “I thought it might be good to block off the door with,” he explained. “It’ll take two people, but I figure one on each side pressing against it should be enough to hold it in place. I mean, as long as there aren’t too many of those things in there.”

  “All right, we’ll give it a shot,” Farley agreed.

  “You got us an entry point?” Barnes asked.

  The Sergeant jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Other side of the building,” he explained, “going in through the front office.”

  “Then what?” the Private asked. “Standard room by room clear?”

  Farley tilted his head back and forth. “On the north side it will be,” he replied. “South side and the gym will be another story as they are packed to the tits with ghouls.”

  “That works for me,” Barnes agreed.

  The Sergeant waved a hand above his head. “All right, let’s get saddled up,” he said. “We got us a building to clear.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Barnes stepped up to the office with a crowbar in his hand. He studied it for a moment, investigating the lock and the edges. He shrugged, reared back, and then smashed out the glass, cleaning up the edges.

  “That’s some fine work there, Corporal,” Wilcox declared.

  Barnes shook his head. “Please don’t reward me with a hug, Private.”

  Wilcox blew him a raspberry. “You’re no fun.” He hooked his hands over the windowsill and pulled himself up, hopping into the empty office. He gave the area a more thorough sweep than they’d done peeking in as the rest of the team joined him, carrying spears. Logan and Santos brought up the rear, carrying the fence.

  Barnes led the way to the door, cracking it open a touch and peering down the hallway. There were a few ghouls on the far end, but they weren’t paying attention. The stairwell door behind them was closed, signaling the top floor was contained for the time being.

  He checked the other end, where the gymnasium lay, the doors also closed.

  He ducked back into the office. “Okay, we go in groups of two, check each room all the way down,” he said quietly. “We’ll do the gym last, together, and then move up to the second level. Questions?”

  Nobody said anything, so he slipped out the door, motioning to Burton to join him. She nodded and followed, and as soon as their bootfalls hit the linoleum, the trio of zombies at the end of the hall turned towards them, moaning.

  The duo raised their makeshift spears and moved up, leaving a few doors accessible behind them for the others to take. Quiet countdowns and doors breaching sounded behind them, but they trusted their team and focused on the task at hand.

  The zombies were dressed in bloody button-down shirts and khakis, the business casual attire of school workers. One even still wore a pair of busted glasses, hanging low on its half-eaten nose.

  “Not all that different from my high school teachers,” Burton quipped, and lunged forward, stabbing her spike into the middle of the ghoul’s face. She wrenched it back, and it didn’t come out as cleanly or quickly as they would have liked, but they had to work with what they had.

  Barnes chuckled as he speared the second one through the eye socket. “Not sure if you mean the brainlessness or the blood.”

  “Both,” she replied as she took out the third and last hallway creature. “Lots of fights at our school. They tried metal detectors one year to try to curb the knife wars, but then kids just started making plastic shivs.”

  The Corporal shook his head as he stepped over the corpses to double check the stairwell door. “Damn, girl, no wonder you’re so badass.”

  She peered into the first dim classroom on the left, seeing no movement, and wrapped her hand around the handle. He readied his weapon and nodded, and she threw open the door. Nothing came rushing out at them, so Barnes carefully stepped inside, sweeping the area.

  Burton followed and moved up the far row of desks. They’d seen horrific things in the past twenty-six days, and she was fairly desensitized to the ghouls at this point. But the younger they were, the more unsettling it was, the more sad. None of them were looking forward to finding young teenage zombies lurking around the school.

  “Clear,” Barnes announced, and they went back out into the hallway.

  “Clear!” Wilcox called from two doors down, and the duo crossed to the other side.

  “Movement inside,” Burton said, and readied the door.

  Barnes nodded, and she did a quiet countdown before throwing it open.

  Two zombies appeared almost immediately, each receiving a vicious strike to the face. Burton kicked hers in the chest to dislodge it from the spear, knocking it back into another shorter ghoul behind. Barnes slipped in, stabbing another creature through the forehead and flinging it back and forth to knock the remaining two around.

  Burton jumped up onto the teacher’s desk, stabbing down with her spear like a fisher, taking out two ghouls in quick succession. Barnes smacked one behind him with the blunt end, and then stomped one on the ground with his boot before slinging the spear at the remaining zombie that struggled to get to its feet.

  They waited a moment to see if anything else was going to come out of the shadows.

  “Clear,” Burton announced, and they retrieved their weapons, heading back out into the hallway. Wilcox and Logan emerged from the next room down.

  “This end’s good,” Wilcox said with a thumbs up.

  “Okay, let’s head down and see how the others are doing,” Barnes instructed. “Hopefully the gym is empty.”

  Wilcox rolled his eyes. “Way to jinx us, Corporal,” he drawled.

  “Afraid to have a little hope?” Burton asked, raising an eyebrow as they walked.

  “Has anything in the last three weeks given the impression that hope is warranted in any situation?” Wilcox quipped.

  Sawyer gave him a playful shove as they caught up to them. “Way to be depressing as fuck, bud.”

  Farley and Santos emerged from the last door on the left before the gym, spikes gleaming with blood. “Clear,” the Sergeant declared, and then headed for the gym doors.

  The two of them peered inside as the team caught up to them.

  Santos murmured something in Spanish and then backed away from the door.

  “That’s never good,” Wilcox muttered, and Sawyer rolled his eyes, leaning against the wall where they’d set down the chunk of fencing.

  “Looks like you were right about the safe zone setup,” Farley said as he scanned the inside. “There’s beds and supplies, and at least five dozen of those things.”

  Wilcox shook his head. “Nothing like using a school gymnasium as a bloodbath.”

  “How are we playing this, Sarge?” Barnes asked.

  Farley pointed to the fence. “Let’s try your fence idea,” he said. “The doors open inwards and auto close, so hopefully it can stem the tide so they’ll come in smaller groups. Graves, Logan, you hold the chain link on either side. Barnes, you take the center, in case we need to brace it.”

  The soldiers got into position, and the Corporal reached over the fence, resting his hand over the latch bar. He did a countdown, and everyone readied their spears.

  At the end, Barnes shoved each door open in turn mightily, giving th
em good momentum to swing open. Zombies immediately flooded the gap, pressing into the fence, snapping and snarling.

  The Corporal stabbed one in the center, but already Logan and Graves struggled to hold the fence in place. He ducked down and threw his weight into the bottom center of the chain link, hoping to relieve the pressure and create an effective barrier for the ghouls.

  The doors couldn’t shut again from the tide of zombies clustering around the entrance to the gym, all of them coming towards the noise and pushing forward like a mosh pit of rotted flesh.

  The soldiers sprung to action, stabbing and lunging forward as best they could. Bodies fell to the floor, creating a bit of an added barrier to the fence. It acted like a battering ram for a time, until the unmoving corpses were so thick that the ghouls clambered up on top of their dead brethren.

  “Raise the fence!” Farley barked, as the zombies had a higher floor to fight against the chain link barrier.

  Barnes rolled away, as rotted claws began to reach through the holes at him, the ghouls clamoring over each other at different heights to get at their meal.

  Logan and Graves grunted with the effort of holding the fence in place, but the spikes were too thick to fit through the holes of the chain link.

  “Ideas?” the Corporal barked as he turned his spear around to try to hold the fence in with the blunt end. The doors were stuck open on the horde, and at this point the fence covered the entire doorway to keep the ghouls from vaulting over the ramp of bodies beneath them.

  Before the Sergeant could answer, Graves slipped to one knee, and the ghouls pushed through. Burton and Sawyer darted forward to try to push the fence back into place, throwing their weight against the fallen soldier, and Santos stabbed wildly with his spear above their heads, trying to protect them against the flailing arms.

  Shouts filled the hallway, echoing and unintelligible in the panic. Graves’ blood ran cold as a tight grip wrapped around his wrist, and he thrashed, putting his boot against the wall and throwing his body backwards.

  Burton and Sawyer staggered back from the movement, and the fence buckled, zombies pouring out of the hole.