Sabre Dancing with the Dead Ch 38
Tokonosu, April 26 20xx
Day 21.
07:45
Both Kat and Wolf were up with the dawn, (a quite ungodly 0450) and were at the clubhouse half an hour later. So was just about everyone else. Major Sagawa had the troops checking the vehicles one more time. Shinji had the teens in hand, and was giving them a pep talk, and explaining how thing would be done on the route march to the university. The kitchen team had been up making breakfast for all hands, with seating starting at 0630, in shifts. Even the troops had been fed, leaving their rations for the mission itself.
All told there were 66 people going on this mission. The library crew consisted of Wolf, Kat, Shizuka, Takashi, Rei, Saeko, Saya and Kohta. Their security crew consisted of 30 from their community, plus the 22 officers and men provide by General Uchimoto.
The route march was laid out as follows. First would be two of the APCs for recon. One was armed with the M2 machine gun that Kohta so loved, while the other would be carrying a grenade launcher. The dismount troops would consist of some of the club people, bolstered with a few of Sagawa's people. Major Sagawa and his 2IC would be commanders for the first two APCs.
Slots 3 and 4 were the Type 90 Armored Recovery Vehicles with their crew of 3 each. Both of these mounted the M2s and the crews had their personal weapons as well.
Slot 5, was another APC, M2 equipped. Manned again by some troops and the rest made up of club people. Slots 6,7, and 8 were assigned to supply trucks,
These 3 carried only the driver and a guard who were from the club compound. Supplies were evenly mixed between the 3, so any one loss wouldn't completely dump them into the kimchi. Each man had his personal weapons.
Slot 9, another APC, this one commanded by Sergeant Shimizu (Shinji) with Rei driving and compound people making up the dismount crew. Wolf and Kat were riding with him. Shinji had picked one of the APCs with the grenade launcher. He was sure that Kohta was able to handle it but it took skill to use one accurately and Kohta had never actually used one. As with the crews for the ARVs, book learning was fine for playing with one, but serious usage required hands on training.
Slot 10 was the fuel truck, 11 was for the water bowser, both crewed by club people. Finally, the last vehicle was an APC, with Kohta and Saya in command and Takashi, Saeko and Shizuka in the infantry compartment with 5 more club members.
The vehicles were both inside and outside the compound and considerable thought had gone into how to get the convoy set up. Getting the 5 trucks out of the compound would require the gate to be opened for a fair amount of time, so part of the preparations included expanding the Nixie chain as far as possible. Another set was put together and mounted on the wall at the far end of the fisherman's compound. One of them had switched it on. The plan was to activate that nixie and let it blare for at least half an hour, possibly more. The APCs were lined up in order, side by side, and planks had been run between each of them so the crews could get to theirs without much risk.
Major Sagawa and his crew would climb down from the wall platform via a ladder, as would all the others. The nixie was already making a racket since just before 0700, while they ate breakfast and as each person finished, they grabbed their gear and made their way to the platform, down the ladder and across to which ever APC they were assigned to. Observers kept an eye on the critters that were slowly migrating up the road towards the horn.
By the time everyone had eaten and mounted up, they were about 20 minutes past their planned departure time. Still, not bad for a combined military and civilian operation. Major Sagawa started up his APC, and drove it East along the first road opposite the club gate. As he moved out, his 2IC followed, then the two ARVs. The pulled far enough ahead so that they could cover the 3 trucks. The fuel and water units pulled out through the open gate, and organized themselves in line behind them.
Things were going quite well, aside from a dozen or so critters who somehow hadn't made it to the nixie and could faintly hear the running APCs. As the convoy organized itself, the lead two moved slowly ahead and some of the dismount team sorted them out with crossbows.
By the time Tail End Charlie had moved into position, it was nearly 0830. The convoy was strung out in a line running nearly to the first cross road, and the Major get the order to move out. The critters were starting to totter back, the noise from the engines was bleeding through the god awful racket from the nixie. It kept most of them in place but some were wandering back. Once the convoy started to move, the crossbows were put aside, and any that came close disappeared under the vehicles.
The Major turned left onto the first cross street. Very few critters to be seen, and they advance steadily until the whole convoy had made the turn. Bumping the speed up, they moved along the cross road, made another left and then a right onto the shore road. There were more critters coming out of alleyways and yards, but the convoy kept on moving toward their first serious obstacle. The road was not blocked with cars and truck enough to need the ARVs to do any clearing. As they had determined on runs to the JSDF base, the road up to the base was not going to be a problem. Passing the Takagi compound, Shinji had Rei pull out of line and enter. Moving to the container ship, she backed the APC up to the gangway. Capt Nishizawa and his daughter got off, after wishing them all luck and god speed. Once they were off, Rei turned round and bumped the speed up and caught up with the convoy and resumed her slot.
The convoy proceeded north to the first bridge, which the recon flight had showed to be blocked on both sides. This bridge carried one of Tokonosu's main arteries, and was 3 lanes in either direction. To the south, the feeder road the club was on joined it via ramps and the raised freeway continued on east past the JSDF compound and back through the city.
There was not much blockage on the ramp to the least clogged lanes, the ones leading north into the city. The convoy had no problem getting up to the level of the highway, by simply weaving around and past the cars and trucks that were stalled there. but they could see a cluster of cars half a click ahead. Major Sagawa called for the convoy to stop. Climbing up on top of his APC, he put the binoculars to his eyes and took his first look at the bridge proper. Even from here he could see the deaders wandering around, bouncing off the vehicles. The photos showed openings between groups of cars, but going in there was going to draw every deader on the bridge.
Sagawa climbed back into the APC and called up the others.
"We have lots of dead wandering around on the bridge. Unless someone has a better idea, I think we might as well just advance to contact, and run them down or pin them behind the wrecks. As long as we all stay in the vehicles we are OK. Comments?"
No one had any better ideas, since the nixies were only good if you wanted to draw the deaders away from somewhere so you could sneak past them. That wasn't going to work here, all they would do is draw the walking corpses to the convoy. All these trucks, APCs and the tracked engineering tanks made a hell of a racket and would draw them just fine.
Wolf spoke up, telling the Major to have at it and his lead APC started forward. As they approached the mass of vehicles, Sagawa had the two engineering tanks swing round either side and into the lead slots. Looking out of their drivers hatches, it was now getting to be wall to wall shambling bodies. They stumbled towards the roaring tanks, which just kept advancing. Soon the two met a couple hundred meters ahead of the worst of the mass of cars.
The tanks didn't stop, they just plowed ahead until they got to the first of the cars. The dead fell before the tanks, or got mangled by the tracks if they were close enough to stumble into them. Thankfully the crews couldn't actually see the mess, but they could imagine it quite well. Several of them quietly barfed their breakfast into cans they'd thought to bring along. They all remembered the frantic rearguard action they'd been in before they got behind the ship yard walls
The lead tank butted into the first car on an angle, and shoved it ahead, turning to the curb lane as it moved. That car caught a couple of other ones which also swung round from the impact. The movement of the cars led to several dead to be pinned between them and others to fall to the ground and get crushed.
Slowly but steadily the two made a lane for the convoy to follow. Backing and filling, the cars and trucks were all unceremoniously shoved aside, leaving them crushed and crumpled, some on top of others. That none of them caught fire was a miracle of biblical proportions. The drivers were being extremely careful not to break any gas tanks, but the smell of gasoline hit them at times. Thankfully the offshore breeze took the fumes away, lessening the risk of a fire.
Some of the dead followed the tanks, but others heard the APCs and turned towards them. As with the runs to the supply houses and the mission to find Takashi's mother, they swarmed round, some disappearing under the wheels, others just bashing against the sides of the wheeled carrier.
As the masses of dead piled up around the vehicles, some of the dismount troops climbed up onto the roof and clipped their harnesses to rings welded to the deck. Their tethers had just enough slack to let them sit at the deck edge and lean over a bit. Benches had been constructed from wood to give them a comfortable perch.
Reaching behind them to a newly welded rack on the center line, each of them picked up a 10 foot length of bamboo. Attached to one end was a spear point without a barb. These had been fabricated in the fisherman's machine shop. The idea was to just jab the corpse in the head hard enough to penetrate the brain without risk of the spear getting caught and pulling the troop off balance. The crossbow bolts would be saved for the library defence.
Settling into position, the soldiers, and some of the club people started to spear the corpses. It took a little while to get the hang of it but they soon were putting down one each time they stabbed out. The bodies were packed so close it was next to impossible for them to move and their heads remained fairly stationary. Not the most fun, but it kept the crowd down in close proximity. Spear one, and it fell. Others would stumble and go down too, spreading the destruction. Those that fell never got back up even if they weren't hit with the spears. The mass behind them crushed them.
As the tanks bulldozed a clear path across, the other vehicles kept moving. On order from Major Sagawa, the entire convoy would move backwards and forwards a hundred feet. By keeping moving, the masses were never allowed to pack in enough to possible impair the movement of the vehicles. He wasn't worried about the tanks or the APCs but the trucks might get jammed up. So, precautions were taken.
Shinji and Rei had dropped of the Captain and Keiko just before 9am, and they'd reached the ramp to the bridge by 0915. By 1200, the tanks had shoved clear a path nearly half way across the 1400 meter long bridge. The wreckage was piled up in clumps on either side of the clear center, and blood and tissue from the crushed deaders coated the road, the wrecks and the lower half of each vehicle.
The armored vehicles crews were not too upset with the situation but the crews of the 3 trucks were seriously wondering what the hell they were doing in this night mare. After a while their comments on the commo channel were getting on everyone's nerves, so the Major arranged for crew changes. This was a bit of a trick but it was done fairly simply by moving 3 APCs to build a box along side each truck. One at the back end, one with its back at the front of the truck and the third would slide up and close the box. The truck would move over to one side, so it would be up tight against the wrecks. This would seriously limit the number of potential corpses crawling under the trucks.
The dismounts took care of as many of the deaders as they could and kept the box clear. The crew change was made as fast as possible, and that kept everyone happy. Major Sagawa figured on a crew change every couple of hours, while in the tight confines of the bridge. Once clear, they'd go back to the original crews and carry on to the JSDF shore base.
It took them another 4 hours to clear a path to the down ramp on the north side of the river. Before they descended back to street level, the Major took another look at the rest of the raised highway. As the aerial photos had shown, there were few spots on the raised road bed that looked relatively clear, and the decision to descend to ground level was kept to. The roads weren't much better but it would be easier for the tanks to maneuver and push the junk around.
It was a total of just over 12 km to the JSDF perimeter. The number of walking corpses only go worse. Coming down off the bridge, they could see them in a solid mass a kilometre long, with more flooding from the side streets. This was going to get interesting.
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Author's notes: I don't own HOTD, or any of its characters. I just get to play in their universe. All characters in this story other than those listed below are (So far) my own.
Komuro Tadashi
Miyamoto Rei
Miyamoto Tadashi
Miyamoto Kiriko
Busujima Saeko
Takagi Saya
Hirano Kouta
Marikawa Shizuka
Marasato Alice
Minami Rika
Reviews gratefully accepted, as long as they are constructive and non-abusive.
Anyone interested in following the progress on the real life Sabre Dance is welcome to visit my builder's blog. Just search for Sabre dancing. You'll find it.
The painting is pretty much done on both sides. I started cleaning up the overhead, removed the panels and the Styrofoam. Quite the mess, the mastic they used was rock hard and stuck like crazy. Got most of it off, but only managed to paint a small part of it at the aft end of the cabin. Now too cold, the epoxy won't kick. So, no more until spring when the temperature is stable and over 45F. Took a month off while the club hauled out the fleet. No point in going, the place is a madhouse for most of the month. Got down yesterday and hauled all the cut plywood up and into the boat. Next trip will be to start installing them.
