Sabre Dancing with the Dead Ch 42

Tokonosu, North Eastern quadrant. April 27 20xx

Day 28.

07:45

04:53... That was the official start of day. The duty watch sent a couple of troops round to wake every one up. One of the doors thumped upon was for the room occupied by the couple who were the heart of this operation. Honestly, if it weren't for the importance of this mission, Wolf would have happily told the trooper who knocked on the door to piss off, and gone back to sleep… But, he rolled over and nudged Kat, then heaved himself out of the bed they'd found last night. Having brought up jugs of water for drinking, and washing, she made for the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, she came out of the bathroom and started to pull on her clothes while Wolf took his turn at a sponge bath. He'd spent a couple of minutes cleaning up the place, thinking that perhaps this apartment building could be made into an outpost, or way station when they came back to the library. He had no doubtn that no matter how much they'd pull from the shelves over the next week, return trips would be happening for some time.

Kicking round ways to secure the library building, he had chatted with some of the engineers last night about permanently sealing up the ground floor doors. Access via the second floor patio seemed to offer the best solution to securing the place, yet making it easy enough to get into the building. They'd come up with a couple of options on how, now they needed to actually see the place to pick the best solution.

Taking a last look round to make sure they hadn't left anything behind, the two walked down the stairs from the second floor and met up with the others in the common room, before heading back out to the vehicles. Major Sagawa gave them a quick pep talk, and they headed out to fire up the convoy. The nixies set up last night had been active since 0600, so the gate area was clear of the shambling corpses. A couple of men on the 2IC's carrier heaved the gate open, and the convoy headed out, APVs in the lead.

They had about 12 kilometers as the crow flies to go before they reached the university campus, and the roads seemed to be less filled with abandoned cars and trucks, the farther they got out of the city. In reality, with all the twists and turn, and the switchback road leading into the campus, it was closer to 17 kilometers. Still, they figured on being there by 1100 at the latest. The Super Stallion was already up, and placing more nixies and operators along the route. They'd added some observers to the crew, and these were getting a good close look at the route, relaying details to the convoy leader.

Breakfast consisted of the JSDF version of MRE's, called "miri meshi". Wolf's had English labeling, Type Two. It turned out to be quite tasty, pork chunks in a sweet and salty sauce. The chemical pack worked extremely well, for a moment he thought it might be getting ready to explode as steam poured out of the vent hole in the back. It came with two servings of rice, and was quite filling. There was also some miso soup mix, which tasted pretty good too, and some seasoning packages to add to the rice.

The sun was gradually coming up over the hills behind the University and it promised to be a pleasant spring day. Everyone was looking forward to arriving at the library and getting set up. Looking out the side windows, they saw elegant houses, set back a fair distance, with meticulously trimmed lawns. Occasionally, they'd see the doors open or windows smashed, but they were far enough away not to make out any remains.

Steadily the ARVs, checked over by their crews last night and refueled, advanced at a faster pace. There were less abandoned vehicles to be moved out of the way, and they mostly just opened up the lanes by side bumping the cars away as they advanced straight ahead. There was a lot less backing and filling, so the speed was bumped up to about seven kph.

The nixies set by the Super Stallion were doing a good job of keeping the hordes of deaders dispersed, and their normal tail had dwindled down to next to nothing as the convoy was moving faster than the reanimated corpse could keep up with. As they passed each nixie station, the noisemaker was shut down, and the troop or troopers radioed for pick up. The units would be left in place to cover the return trip, covered with tarps to keep them dry.

So far, the mission was going quite well. They reached the start of the switchback just after 0900, and the APVs lead the way up the two lane street, a gentle drop off on one side, and a concrete covered embankment on the other. Steadily they climbed up the road, and then reversed course onto the next leg. There were few vehicles on the road leading into the University, and the run up the last leg to the grounds was easily done.

As they reached the top of the small plateau the University was on, the top of buildings became visible, and grew, the closer they got. Shizuka was now standing up in one of the overhead hatches, looking to see what she could of the medical school, the multistory brown building north of the library. Their target, the library occupied the area encircled by the drive and was 3 stories tall. As had been described by the numerous former and active students, the rooftop patio extended round 3 sides of the building. There were no signs of life. Only a large horde of dead coming from all directions.

Wolf was much more interested in the actual construction of the library. They would indeed be able to get up on the second floor patio easily, by backing the vehicles up to the wall and using the ladders. Looking at the ground floor, he was pleased to see that while there were a lot of windows, they were at least head height above the outside ground. As the convoy moved slowly round the building, he took note of the one main door, and several fire exits. From what he could see, the door frames were steel and appeared well anchored into the brick clad walls. Closer inspection would give him and the engineers a good idea on how they could secure the building, rendering it safe.

Listening in on the combined ops channel, he heard Major Sagawa call the convoy to move into position against the library building walls. All of them, even the APVs, backed up to within a couple of feet of the brick walls. Once in position, the Major ordered them to all shut down, then called the deployed nixie troops to start the music. Within a couple of minutes, the cacophony abused their ears, and as normal, the crowd of dead dispersed in several directions, depending on where they were in the crowd.

The blaring of the horns was not as bad as it had been in the drive to the library, they'd deployed the noisemakers a lot closer to the convoy, but the doctrine was evolving and based on the early results, they'd determined that as long as the nixie was in line of sight of the target crowd, they could be placed several hundred yards away. Wolf figured the noise was about as irritating as the car horns he used to hear when he live in his old apartment.

Unsurprisingly, they looked up to see a dozen or so zombie students and a couple of teachers stumble up to the parapet around the patio. Standing on the front of the APCs, the crossbows took care of them. As the critters moved further away, the ladders were lifted from their slings and moved into place. Several of the Major's troops quietly crept up, and peeked over the parapet. All were down, but there were still one or two headed in their direction from the open door leading into the second floor. These were taken out by bow as well.

Signaling that the patio was clear, both of the lead APCs dismounted their troops and climbed up, got organized and quietly entered the second floor. Thanks to the carpeted floor and excellent training, they moved around, silent as ghosts, listening for the shuffling sound of an animated corpse. Inside the noise of the horns was negligible. Clearing the 2nd floor took less than 10 minutes, and ended 3 more zombies, The two teams next headed up to the 3rd floor, leaving a squad as rear guard in case something came up from below.

The comm channel was being monitored by all the different vehicles, and they were kept well informed as to the status of the clearing. The third floor was a much worse job, as the people trapped up there during the chaos had had nowhere to run, the dead were coming up the stairwells, and the few who tried elevator had died quickly as it opened up in the lobby, to a large crowd of terrified people and attacking dead. All told they had to put down 21 students and others.

Handling the bodies was done according to the procedure devised by Shizuka, in consult with one of the JSDF doctors who'd made it to the shipyard. All the troops wore latex gloves, masks and face shields, and the bodies were carted to the off side of the building, after being rolled carefully onto a stretcher. After the body was on the stretcher, the two men rinsed their hands in a bucket of disinfectant which had been scrounged from a chemical warehouse some miles from the shipyard. The bodies were unceremoniously dumped over the balcony railing and dusted with quick lime. While they were doing that, a 3rd man walked around with a floor scrubber and a bucket of disinfectant, and diligently cleaned up whatever blood and fluids he found. Chunky bits ended up in a bucket to be tossed later.

After clearing all the rooms and spaces, the library was declared secure, and Major Sagawa gave the OK for the club people to climb up to the patio and see about getting set up for the search. Kat, Shizuka and the teens moved inside, and chose a central place to use as the hub for the search. Wolf headed down to the main floor. He wanted to have a closer look at the doors, and how they were constructed, and set into the building. He had an idea that might well make the doors impenetrable.

Kat and Shizuka got organized at a central set of tables, dropping their gear and started walking about, seeing where the various sections were, with an eye on divvying up the search so each of the kids would not have to run all over the place. It took them a while, with the teens along, and all 3 floors had been surveyed in an hour or so. Having found a map of the floors was a great help.

In the mean time, Major Sagawa had his and some of the club people moving supplies from the trucks, to the tops of the APCs and then on to the patio. The supply trucks had parked within inches of the side of an APC, and the driver and guard had waited til the deaders were well away before climbing into the back of the truck. Quickly the canvas cover was rolled up to the front, a human chain was formed and boxes started moving upwards.

Sentries were posted to keep an eye on the distant crowd of deaders, shuffling about trying to find the nixies. After most of them had been drawn away, the Major radioed the nixie teams to shut down to conserve the batteries. Freshly charged ones had also been deployed with the teams so power wasn't much of an issue, but better safe than sorry.

While the unloading was going on, Wolf and some of the engineers climbed back down to the APCs and then dropped to the ground for a look at the outside of the doors. They had good coverage, with at least two sentries visible at all times. First they checked the main doors. These were two glass doors, recessed about 3 meters into the building, with steel frames, and a full height window on either side. They had taken apart one of the frames from the inside, and determined that it was lag bolted into the poured concrete. The bricks on the outside faces were seemingly just there for aesthetic appeal.

Wolf and one of the engineers took a tape measure and measured the width of the recess. It was a bit over 3 meters wide, and this was noted along with the details of the construction. The main doors were also checked as to how they opened. Completing this task, they moved on to the fire doors. These were standard single door, opening outward, with the frames also lag bolted into the concrete. Again, the width was measured.

They moved once around the building, making note of the number of doors, and checking that there were no other possible entry points. Survey completed, they climbed back up to the patio, where a group of troopers and civvies were putting together a late noon meal. They had hauled half a dozen propane stoves, pots, pans, utensils and bowls along with them, being among the first items unloaded.

Blankets and air mattresses had been sourced from several sporting goods and outdoors stores, and they set up sleeping quarters for the off duty sentries, in a quiet room off to one side, using the hot bunk method. Kat, Shizuka and her gophers had decided that they'd crash in the open area where their central set up was.

In the lead up to the mission, Wolf and Kat had written down each of the categories that had to be researched. Each was a separate list, with everything they'd been able to think of after Wolf had put together the framework for the search.

Following lunch, the research group met by the centre desk, and were handed a couple of lists, which had now been organized by collocated stack locations. The kids would be able to cover things much easier, just going up and down the stack. Each had one of the book carts, used to move books and place returned books on the shelves. They had their lists, and would be going along methodically, picking up any books that looked like they would have the information. A quick scan of the table of contents, a flip through the pages, and it went into the cart. Any ones of questionable use were kept separate.

They had no idea how long they could keep up the search for the materials they needed, it all depended on the light. They had thought of oil lamps, but gave up on that because of the fire risk if one was knocked over. They had found a few sets of LED's that you wore on a headband. They gave a pretty bright white light, and the batteries should last a good while since the LEDs drew so little power. For now, the windows around all sides gave plenty of light and the hunt was on.

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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.

The map has been updated some, adding things as the story progresses.

sabrekai/art/New-Tokonosu-20km-x-40km-956877662

Found a model kit of the Type 96 APC, in the process of building it and modifying it as per the story. Pics will be posted to Deviant Art when completed.