Biohazard, Part II
(Off note: The character Kitty mentioned in this story was partially inspired by both the X-men Evolution Kitty Pryde and a friend of mine.)
November: "Hey sarge," Taine said, "What have you heard about our new unit?"
"Bunch of Aussie boys from what I heard. Good bunch of lads." Muldoon replied.
The 172nd Regiment had been so badly mauled that its remnants were being spread out to reinforce other units. Taine, Hendrick, and Muldoon had all been sent into the 5th Infantry Division, with the 144th Australian Regiment. All were part of the larger Seventh Army.
The Portsmouth harbor was a wave of activity, in preparation for the United Systems Military plan to reoccupy a far off island in the North Atlantic, 120 miles off the coast of Europe, Sheena Island. Tanks were being painted white and soldiers were being issued white camouflaged parkas among other things, it was after all, mid-November.
The Transatlantic journey was a nervous one for many of the soldiers, several of which had never seen combat before. "The Sergeant Major told me nothing prepares you for combat." Muldoon said, dropping rifle clips into his bandolier, "Training, boot camp, simulations, that teaches you what to do, but it won't prep you for what you face."
"You've got it right." Taine replied, nodding. His head was turned in such a way that he hadn't seen a sticky fingered private grab a pistol off a nearby bunk and walk away with it.
The Marines had already secured the Sheena Island beaches and as the landing craft touched ashore they directed Army units into the front lines where they were needed. On the front lines stiff opposition was encountered on every section of the front, particularly in Dyson City, the only major city on Sheena, and the sector of the front held by the 5th Infantry, the 144th Australian was forced to dig in and hold fast against increasing attacks at all hours of the day and night.
Staff Sergeant Keck, the platoon sergeant for Muldoon and Taine's platoon was part of a patrol that poked across no-man's land, searching out the hiding places where the undead creatures they did battle with were hiding. Lieutenant Whyte, the platoon leader, had been killed an hour earlier by a slasher that quickly retreated into a stand of pine trees.
Keck, an old hand of the Army, had ordered the men to hunker down. The patrol had been hunkered behind the snow embankment for almost three hours, the cold biting despite their heavy clothing.
"Why didn't they come and drive us out in force?" said one nervous soldier, PFC Donald Rees, the affable pistol thief.
"Who knows." Sergeant Queen said, an eight-year Army veteran from Adelaide.
Before he could reply, Rees saw three slashers walking up the side of a snowy hill. Sighting his rifle, turning off the safety, Rees fired six times, missing five of them, but killing one of the slashers with his sixth shot. "I got `em! I got `em!"
"Hey Queen! Queen you there!" Rees shouted.
"Yeah!" Queen shouted.
"I counted three slashers leaving that snowy ridge. I got me one of them." Rees said.
"So." Queen shouted back.
"I think maybe their pulling out." Rees shouted back, "Maybe somebody ought to go tell the captain!"
"Well you wanna be the one to do it." Queen shouted back, "Just stay put, I'm ordering you."
"Here they come!" shouted PFC Beasly, the unit sniper, snapping off a shot, killing a zombie that staggered back down the ridge with a large group, accompanied with several screechers.
Keck and several of the other soldiers in the nineteen-man patrol returned fire. Just when it seemed they had driven off one attack, another materialized.
Firing his laser until it went empty, Keck grabbed for a grenade behind his back, to his everlasting horror he saw the pin in his right hand. Throwing himself against the embankment, the grenade exploded. "Keck!" someone shouted.
"Oh Jesus!" Keck yelled, "I blew my butt off! I blew my butt off! What a f#$king recruit trick to pull, I grabbed it by the pin!!!!! You write my old lady, tell her I died like a man!"
"Nobody's gonna have to write your old lady, you're gonna make it out of this." Rees said.
"Don't you bullshit me!!!!" Keck shouted, almost hysterical, grabbing Rees by the front of his parka, leaving twin stains of red from his hands on Rees' lapels.
Keck died raving. "You gonna write his wife?" Muldoon said to Rees.
"F#$k no. I'm no good at writing letters." said Rees, "That's the Company Commander's job, not mine…." "You told him you would." Muldoon said.
"You say anything to them when they're like that." Rees said.
"Let's get back to our lines, shall we." Muldoon said, leading the patrol back to friendly lines.
Taine was standing his post in his foxhole, while the other soldier on watch stood his post at the machinegun. The other soldier was a slender man in his early forties, with a gruff voice. He was a preacher from Darwin known simply as the Reverend to his fellow soldiers.
"Hey Reverend," said the third soldier occupying the cramped snow hole, Rees, "Why'd you join up."
"The shepherd must tend his flock." the Reverend replied, "And at times, fight off the wolves."
"Speaking of wolves Reverend," Taine said, indicating several stealthy shapes moving toward the foxholes from a nearby gulley.
Rees raised his rifle to shoot, Taine stopped him, "Reverend, move that machinegun over here, and on my signal, gun those bastards down."
The zombies and slashers came into view and Taine said, "Fire."
The Reverend let fly with the machinegun, spraying an entire belt into the attackers, the surviving creatures retreated. Hearing the gunfire, Muldoon, rifle unslung, came running.
"They're gone." Taine said, indicating six dead creatures lying in the snow, machinegunned by a clever trap.
Resuming their post, Taine, the Reverend, and Rees were relieved by the oncoming watch. Returning to the bivouac, Muldoon said, "From the top, Sergeant Queen's promotion to platoon sergeant means we need a squad leader. I recommended you for the job and the LT concurs, you're acting squad sergeant."
Taine stood astounded, "This is the third time I've made sergeant." "Hopefully you'll have that acting rank be permanent. And also that you'll keep that third stripe this time around." Muldoon said.
Fifteen days, Taine thought, fifteen days of these nonstop energy barrages followed by mass infantry assaults on our positions.
Fifteen days earlier, Taine had put on that third stripe, and it seemed almost as soon as he took charge of Queen's old squad, major offensives along the entire sector held by the 144th Australian.
An energy burst exploded, throwing an unwary soldier into the air. For minutes on end, the barrage went on, and an eerie silence settled over the no-man's land, a silence Taine knew would be swiftly broken.
The first rifle shots the heralded an assault sounded through the trenches as the outposts were attacked. The gunfire began to increase in intensity and up and down the sector, the 144th continued to fight.
The Reverend was firing his rifle into the attacking mass of zombies, slashers, screechers and other monsters. They seemed to be using this trick constantly, and it was working. Already many units had to withdraw their lines inward a few miles as fighting in Dyson City's wrecked streets intensified.
The re-drawn lines had the 5th Infantry Division, together with the 8th and 3rd Divisions holding a sector of the front called the Bastion, as repeated assaults had been launched against this position again and again, but always were driven back. The 11th Armored Division acted as a mobile reserve to combat the biggest assaults.
All these big picture strategic terms, meaning a lot to the generals but very little to the men freezing in the trenches. Things however, were about to get worse. Encircled now, the Seventh Army was on its own against attacking forces, with supplies starting to run low. Mandel Airfield, a medium sized airport, was quickly seen as an artery for supplies to be flown in to keep up the fighting and evacuate the wounded from the front lines.
A gorgeous red dawn appeared over the horizon, the first Taine had seen in a long time. By now the 7th Army had been here for three months, three months of fighting that seemed to intensify and then lull only to resume again.
The lovely dawn was somewhat sobered by the fact that the outpost Taine and his squad manned had been observing massive buildups of enemy forces, from hordes of zombies, to scuttling scorpions and the enormous energy cannons in their sector. However, the 144th was helpless to prevent it, they were running out of ammunition.
A rolling barrage appeared, driving Taine and his men into the ground. When the barrage passed further to the rear, Taine saw several giant scorpions scuttling into a gulley. Patiently, Taine waited to spring a trap. He had stationed a .75-millimeter anti-tank gun out to his right, in the no-man's land.
The first of the scorpions scuttled from the gulley and Taine fired a flare into the sky. The bright starburst alerted the gun crew and the .75 roared. The first scorpion took the shell right through the head, which passed right through it's entire armored carapace before exploding in open air.
The .75 roared again, the second scorpion taking the shell through the flanks, blowing it in half. A third scorpion was hit in the legs and lay thrashing about madly before it died. Taine had won the first skirmish, but the enemy regrouped. Taine quickly called up artillery support, getting only seven rounds from rear batteries, which were being severely rationed.
The scorpions appeared again and Taine's .75 went back into action again. After firing fifteen rounds, Taine received a phone call from his irate commander who shouted, "Only take sure shots."
And in the middle of a battle, the sergeant had to explain why he had been so reckless with ammunition. He was ordered to get his crew on the ball. For his work in driving off another enemy attack, Taine received an official reprimand for wasting shells.
Muldoon was made aware of this when Taine trudged into the barracks, angrily kicking an ammo case out of his way. "Bastards!" Taine shouted, "You'd think they'd be grateful for me driving off another assault, but no, Lieutenant Griffin had to yell at me for wasting shells. Well would you rather I waste shells or let those armored units over run our outpost!"
Muldoon, cleaning his rifle, nodded sagely, "That's the Army for you. You do them a big service and they charge you for breaking regulation. The Sergeant Major told me to expect that."
"I don't know what he meant by yelling at you, but I believe your actions saved our lives." the Reverend said, "Griffin wasn't on the frontlines, he couldn't have known."
"Unreasonable piece of…." Taine said, as an energy orb struck the bunker, shaking the walls and raining dirt onto the occupants.
"Hey sarge," said Rees, "Thanks, you saved us out there."
"You're welcome." Taine growled.
"You'll find, invariably that the Army will screw you over on anything." Muldoon said.
"Another piece of advice from the Sergeant Major?" Taine asked.
"No, just a well known fact." Muldoon replied, shouldering his rifle and gear, and pulling his squad out to the foxholes.
Muldoon's eyes blinked for a brief instant as they stared across the no man's land. Aside from the occasional rifle shot, no-man's land was unusually quiet today. The bunkers were further to the rear, built into the sides of cliffs in the ravine. Somehow this was far more disquieting than the massive and intense assaults that he had been seeing.
Only the occasional shot from snipers on the no-man's land shattered the silence. Not fifty yards from Muldoon's foxhole was Beasley, camouflaged behind a fallen pine tree, he was taking the occasional pot shot at the creatures that ventured too near the front lines.
The relief unit arrived and the foxholes were occupied by the oncoming shift. As Muldoon led his exhausted squad back to the barracks, a harsh cadence rang across the bunkers.
"One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four." The cadence sounded as officers hastily trained recruits for the infantry. Clerks, cooks, orderlies, telephone operators, men under punishment for crimes all marched up and down the ravine in close order drill. Most of these men had not come out of the warm bunkers throughout the campaign and few ever dreamed of facing the enemy swarms across the no man's land. This was more evidence as to the draining manpower the Seventh Army was suffering.
Muldoon flexed cold fingers and toes as he sat on his bunk, placing his rifle at arm's length. He saw Taine was sitting, awake, his electric gun across his knees. The cadence could be heard inside the bunker as the new recruits were being marched outside.
"Bloody man power shortages. We're even using up our clerks and orderlies to hold them in." Taine said.
"I heard two tankers talking about fuel shortages being a problem. Looks like armored support won't be as available as we want it on the front." Muldoon replied.
"A sergeant from the 3rd was in here talking about how they've been intensifying attacks on his sector." Taine replied. An orderly entered and silently distributed mail about.
Taine opened the letter he received, "Bloody Kathryn, telling me about shortages on the home front. Wanting to know how we've been fairing in the encirclement."
"Tell her the shelling and attacks aren't the problem. Tell her Rees' feet are." Beasley complained from his bunk.
"Ha ha ha." Rees replied, cleaning the pistol he had filched months earlier.
"Who's Kathryn?" Muldoon asked.
"An old friend of mine, Kitty to her friends. She worked at the Cairo Museum with my parents. She went off to college I went to the army.." Taine replied.
"Why the Army?" Muldoon said.
"Why else, free money after six years of service." Taine replied, grinning.
"You're telling me you joined the Army for free college money, took all this scut work and wound up here." Muldoon grinned incredulously.
"To each his own." Taine replied, "Also I wanted to get out into some fresh air before I go back to Egypt."
"What about you?" said the Reverend, indicating Muldoon.
"What else would I do?" Muldoon said, "The Sergeant Major is just one person in the bloodline to spend his bloody life in the Army, I thought I'd do just the same." Muldoon replied.
"Reverend?" Rees asked.
"The shepherd must tend his flock. And at times," the Reverend said, "Fight off the wolves."
Later, Taine had said, "Well, there's one other reason I went into the Army. To run away."
"From what?" Muldoon asked.
"The way I felt about Kitty. I didn't think she'd want to be with me because I was sure she was crazy about someone else…"
"You ran away." Muldoon said, understanding, "I know what you mean by that."
That next day began eerily silent. Only the occasional rifle shot echoed across the cratered no man's land. Suddenly then, a massive assault on every sector of the front struck full force, USM artillery men quickly ran out of ammunition and blew up their pieces with the last shells before retreating into a second line of resistance.
Only the Bastion managed to hold the attack for any length of time before a mass stampede to the rear began. For the 144th Australian, the day was one connected with heavy losses as they were ordered to fight a delaying action at the Eyre bridge to allow retreating troops to cross safely before they were to cross and blow the bridge up.
Dug in at several hastily thrown up rifle pits and machinegun nests, the 144th awaited the inevitable assault. "Hey Reverend," said Rees, "Could you do me a favor and pray for me."
"Of course, but let us pray in the words that the Lord taught us. In the name of the Father, and Son, and the Holy Ghost…." Reverend began.
Out in front of the 144th when the vast majority of the retreating 7th Army forces in their sector had crossed, a line of mines had been placed. Mines began to explode then.
"Maybe they're not coming. Maybe they're turning back. Maybe we got `em all." Hendrick said.
The whine of chain saw motors and the screeching of screechers joined a cacophony of zombie groans. "Fire!" came the shout.
Muldoon fired shots carefully, blasting holes into stomachs and torsos of opposing troops. Hendrick was spraying ammunition into the attacking line, mowing several down. Machinegun nests provided more fire support and a mortar company was acting as artillery support with a single .37-millimeter anti-tank gun for anti-armor defense from across the bridge.
A slasher, chain saw raised, charged towards Taine who fired a fatal burst of electricity into it. Despite the fearsome toll of casualties inflicted on the enemy at the first line of rifle pits, Taine knew it was a short time before they would have to pull back to a second line of resistance.
The anti-tank gun kept firing rounds, blasting scorpions in half, but the armored juggernaut kept advancing. Taine's prediction came true and the first line of rifle pits fell, the men in them either fighting to the end or retreating to the second resistance line.
Like an inhuman scourge, the creatures overwhelmed the bridge defenses by sheer numbers. Surviving soldiers retreated across the bridge so quickly that the mortar company was attacked and absorbed heavy casualties before a company of the mauled 144th Australian Regiment turned around and attacked long enough for the surviving mortar men to salvage their equipment and begin the retreat.
For Taine's company it was another bloodbath. The Reverend became a casualty that day during a firefight. A group of slashers attacking a mortar platoon were spotted and attacked by Taine's unit.
Rees was firing his rifle until the weapon broke, whereupon he threw his now useless rifle at the slashers. The Reverend had just loaded another magazine, chambering a round when a drill bit fired from a slasher's drill struck him a fatal wound. His last act was to throw his rifle into the air into Rees' hands.
Stragglers who asked for the whereabouts of their units were very often told to look in Dyson City. Indeed many of the routed Seventh Army units were fleeing into Dyson where months of intensive fighting had left the city in ruins.
One block long apartment house overlooking Central Plaza in the very heart of Dyson City became known as the Crucible, for soldiers who went inside it rarely came back out. For six days men fought for just one room, grenades killing friend and foe alike. The first that Major Grayson of the 144th Australian heard of this was when an exhausted sergeant stumbled into his command post and promptly demanded more grenades.
A medic who examined the sergeant noticed his bloodshot eyes said, "Stay here, you may go blind."
"The others in there can hardly see anything, we must have the grenades." Muldoon, the bloodshot-eyed sergeant demanded.
Another soldier volunteered to take them and Muldoon collapsed into a chair from exhaustion.
Taine was still in the wrecked ruin of the apartment house. Slashers, zombies, and other creatures had occupied the house in strength and his unit was attempting to drive them out. Bloodied bodies, either recently dead or killed in months old battles lay strew about the floors, the stench of death mingling with the thick smoke billowing into the rooms.
A soldier with a satchel full of grenades came running in. Taine grabbed one and threw it up the staircase, below which he and his men were ducked. The grenade exploded upstairs and agonized cries told him that he had inflicted some casualties.
However, the creatures still controlled the upstairs rooms, launching hit and run attacks into the soldiers in the bottom and cellar floors. Taine had lost count of how many creatures he had killed coming down the staircase. For six days and nights he and his men alongside Muldoon's squad had been fighting over this apartment house. And for six days many of the soldiers coming in with them had been killed.
From across the street snipers tracked the creatures through windows with telescopic sights. For the next day Taine heard rifle shots and screams from upstairs. That night, when he and his men picked upstairs alongside the remnants of Muldoon's squad they found several monsters lying killed on the floor, shot to death by huge holes blasted in torsos and heads.
Fierce fighting about the wrecked buildings of Dyson City could be heard day and night. Screams, rifle shots, explosions and all other noises associated with battle interfered with the sleep of soldiers holding a dangerous enemy at bay.
In a basement just off a Dyson City, Taine set up a machinegun to interdict some side streets and then saw the distraught state of the twelve men crammed into the dark basement alongside him. Muldoon's squad was holding the fort somewhere across the street with a mortar tube, depending on Taine's machinegun nest for protection.
The battered 144th was assigned to hold the Central Plaza area at all costs. With low morale and half rations, Taine couldn't see the wisdom in the command staff's planning. Conversations in the basement would lower to whispers and men would sit about, staring of into space. Many were convinced that Dyson City would be their tomb.
Even Taine himself was falling prey to such fatalistic thinking. Why had he done such a rash thing six years ago by signing up with the Army, he thought as he looked past his machinegun. Why hadn't he told Kitty just how he really felt about her? It was too late to do anything now.
The sentiment echoed in foxholes and basements throughout the 7th Army. Many soldiers were suffering from illness, starvation due to half rations being imposed, and an unshakable feeling that the 7th Army was doomed.
Muldoon watched for the hundredth time as a mortar round shot out from the basement window of his improvised mortar pit and exploded into a crowd of zombies. They had been launching mass assaults all day and they were having a hell of a time driving them off.
From his basement window, Taine looked past his machinegun at a water fountain on the intersection. For days it had been the focal point of firefights and Taine had killed a number of creatures attempting to reach it. There was also a line of dead humans on the opposite side, cut down as they crawled across the ice with empty canteens. With his war being reduced to fighting over a sip of water, Taine was ready to call it quits. A message over the radio spurred on hope, that the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Unit had landed on the outskirts of Dyson and were fighting their way in.
Morale in the shattered basements and foxholes of the 7th Army rose sharply as this news began to spread…
To be continued…
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