Sabre Dancing with the Dead Ch 47

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Tokonosu, North Eastern quadrant. May 12 20xx

Day 28.

08:35

It was time to try and recon the Medical Center. Major Sagawa's 2IC, Captain

Katano Fusahisa, had his APC loaded, Dr Young among the crew. After a final check with the Major, his driver fired up the engine, and the APC made the short trip across the campus to the Medical Center.

The nixies had been fired up a few minutes before the APC started it's engine, and what few deaders were near the med center were already slowly migrating towards the distant noises. Even so, some of them did hear the diesel, and turned back towards that moving sound. For now they were not a concern, they might be once the APC was up against the building wall, but a couple of cross bows were on hand to take care of that.

Captain Fusahisa had his driver do a complete circuit around the building, which was a good 100 meters long, and about 40 wide. As they went round, note was taken of the number of doors that would need to be secured. When the APC had made a complete circle and arrived back at the start, the Captain had Dr Young come up on to the top of the APC to discuss the best entry point.

After some discussion between the two, it was decided that entry would be made through one of the windows to the kitchen. They were about 2.5 meters above the ground, and with the APC backed in tight, getting in wouldn't be a problem. Once inside, they'd evac the remaining three civilians and start to methodically clear and secure the building. With that, the APC driver turned the heavy vehicle 90 degrees and started backing up to the window Andrew had climbed out of. As it got closer, a head popped up, watching the green and brown camoed 8 wheeler come closer. A troop on the back deck slowly directed the driver backwards until the top of the APC was less than 20 centimeters from the wall.

Once the personnel carrier was in position, the engine was shut down, and silent routine came into play. With the noise of the engine gone, and the nixies still blaring, the deaders again reversed direction and waddled off towards the distant noise makers. After 20 minutes or so, the first troopers were climbing through the window, down onto a stainless steel counter top, and then to the floor. Exercising as much silence as possible, they moved to the two doors and checked the cafeteria. A few deaders shuffled about, but that was all they could see from their positions.

The Captain split his team into two groups, and set about removing the barricading materials from the doorways. Quietly opening the doors, the lead men, armed with a crossbow, stepped out and started picking off the dozen or so critters in the fairly large room. The little noise made by the impact of a bolt and the fall of a skewered corpse attracted the nearer ones, who shuffled back towards the bowmen. As they got close to the original bodies, they'd be added to the heap on the floor. While they handled the corpses, the rest of the team picked up empty cans and bottles, and made ready to advance to the hallway.

It took less than 15 minutes for the last of the walking corpses to be put down, and the crossbow bolts to be recovered. With the teams now ready, they quietly advanced the length of the cafeteria, constantly scanning for any signs of critters they'd missed. In another 5 minutes, the large room was cleared, and the doors secured.

Capt Fusahisa decided not to split up his men for clearing the halls and rooms. Instead, they'd be securing the stairwell door at this end, and leave a couple of men as rear guard. Then the main body would advance down the corridor to the other end, flushing out the baddies as they went. Everybody had various items to toss ahead, there having been lots of empty cans and bottles in the kitchen where the survivors had been hiding. As Wolf and Kat had done when leaving Fujimi High, things were tossed a good distance ahead, and the critters that came out were dispatched by crossbow. As they got up to a room door, one man would quietly peek in, and signal what he saw waiting. How they dealt with a room depended on the number of dead wandering about.

One or two would be drawn out, and taken out. If there were several, the team would split up quietly, on either side of the door and one would draw, while the other group nailed them from behind. As proven time and again, silence was the key. Make a noise to one side, and they'd be turned, so they could be hit from behind with a lot less problems.

The main lobby was secured by lashing shut the main doors from inside with rope brought along from the club for that purpose. Very tough stuff, no way some rotting corpse or two would be able to put enough pressure on it to break five or six tightly wrapped turns. Moving on, they cleared the rest of the hall and the ground floor was secured. The stairwell to the basement was checked, and those doors were also roped shut. Any critters in there would be dealt with once the main floors had been cleared and secured.

The next step was to go up to the 2nd floor, and work their way back to the starting end. Rinse and repeat, move on to the 3rd floor. All in all it took the better part of four hours to secure the main areas of all three floors. There were a couple of close calls, where a critter got stuck behind some obstacle and didn't come out when baited. Again, silence was the saving factor, since four troopers had replaced their combat boots with sneakers, and were by this time quite adept at silent movement. These were the guys who went out on most of the scavenging missions. Walking around in bandit territory had become second nature to them. The lurkers were spotted before they could do any damage, and no one got hurt.

With the main areas secure, some troops got to mapping out and measuring the various doors that needed to be permanently blocked. Dimensions were taken, and the structure around them was investigated, with an eye to using the same method used at the library. Extendable pipes, 50-75 millimeter in diameter. All in all there were four single doors, leading to service areas, and a pair in the lobby, front and back Here they had a bit of a problem as the two doors were flanked by glass panels on either side and the pipes would be fairly long and awkward to install. They'd need pipes that would cover a distance of 10 meters. The crew installing those would need more than just two guys to lift them in place and expand them. That was taken into account when planning the next part of the op. It would probably take 24hrs for the engineers at the yard to put together the required pipes, and then fly them out to the University.

As that was being done, the remainder slowly started to clear the bodies. Not a fun job, they'd be carted up to a 2nd floor room at the back and dropped out the window. It could have been worse, they'd only had to cart some 75 or 80 stiffs up to the window. Once those two tasks were completed, there wasn't any reason to stay there, so they loaded up the APC and headed back to the Library for some rest and food. The survivors were thanking everyone for getting them out of that mess, for too long, it'd looked like a dead end for them all.

Meanwhile, back at the Library, Wolf was wracking his brains, trying to come up with a way to connect the Library with the Medical center. He sat up on the patio, and drew a sketch of the two buildings, and the terrain between them. Distance was the biggie here. Ideally they'd put up a double wall corridor between the two buildings. How? Beats the hell out of him for now. The distance had to be 600-700 feet at least. No way in hell they'd be able to make a corridor that long.

Building a bridge? Again, too long. Think, Wolf, think! He wandered back into the library, wandering through the shelves looking for anything that might spark an idea. It was as he rounded the end of a stack that he came across a bunch of posters of wilderness adventures stuck on the wall. One of them showed a tourist sliding down a zip line in Costa Rica. Talk about a light bulb moment. That poster got him going down another path, thinking back on his WWII history books. Mid ocean resupply, ship to ship… They rigged a breeches buoy, a cable between the two ships, with cargo and people passed back and forth in slings. The concept had been used for centuries, and was the basis of a lot of life saving missions for shipwrecks too.

He headed back out to the patio and grabbed up his note pad. Some sketching, and he had the idea ironed out. Now it was time to see if he could sell it. As he headed over to talk to Major Sagawa, the APC rumbled up to the Library and backed into its slot. Ladder in place and the crew and survivors came up, just in time for a late lunch.

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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.

Tokonosu map, URL as follows.

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