Right of passage

(For the fans this is a continuation from the "A Weeks Worth of Nothing" story line following "Deux" in his attempt to escape Houston, Tx and the strugle he faces with himself and the undead. I'll continue the "Nine of Nine" series at a later time)

It's been four long weeks since I left the aparment complex. Four weeks since I had killed my first and hopefully last human. Frans death will stick in my mind forever as quite possibly the most cruel thing I've ever done. I had cornered her on the outside balcony and put a gun to her head and gave her a choice "Join them or join god either way I don't care but you will die today." The usual rant of curses, swears and the accusations of my being the devil incarnate followed suit followed by me putting a bullet in her knee and shoving her over the side. I like to think that I was just using her as bait for the couple dozen undead that had surrounded our building but really I didnt watch so I dont know how well that would have worked. The other two left provided no resistence and I simply left them there to whatever became of them.

I felt somewhat better out there able to make my own decisions reguarding my survival and it was working decently well. About a week into my journey I joined up with a group of Army soldiers who had been overrun while fortifying a freeway overpass. We were headed in the same direction so I figured what the hell its worth a shot. Our destination was Ellington Field, a reserve base for the Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard. That of course ment two things: one was the fact of helicopters stationed there which ment evacuation; two was the least thrilling....it ment people. We were armed of course, armed to the teeth and had a fairly large supply of ammo so dealing with them wasnt an issue the problem was that we were located on the north side of town Ellington was thirty-six miles south of us, with potentially a couple hundred thousand undead between us. I knew this, the six soldiers knew this but it was the best course of action, to the north we faced woods and tourist country that direction would lead us to Dallas or Austin nither of which contained any good news reguarding the living or the dead. One good thing though was that we had limited radio contact with the airforce at Ellington. I remember Johan, a sarcastic private remarking "Great....air support....these thing have little to no heat signature and we dont have a laser to paint them with." I remember thinking to myself after watching the old war movies 'An AC-130 Spectre wouldnt be to bad.'

We had traveled though quiet streets engaugeing the undead with frightning percision but it was mostly only groups of two or three until we hit the downtown area. That was the first time I ever saw the devestation of these weapons up close. We hit 34th street just inside of the downtown loop when we were hit. At first it was a few easily delt with but soon more and more began to pour out of every building every allyway and side street. We opened up on them hard the automatic gun fire tore into them ripping off limbs cutting bodies in two and quite literally blowing heads clean off. The commands being given out by MSGT Gutree were percise, "Shift right flank close 100 meters, Left flank danger close fifty meters...." It was a specticle to truly behold. Through my time with them they had given me the basics of thier strategy in this kind of situation, slow them down by taking out limbs at 100 meters make them easier slow moving targets let them crawl and be trampled by thier own until they hit 50 meters them take them out so that we slowly build a wall they have to climb over." it was a sound plan, we had buildings to either side of us that acted as a natural barrier the wall was quickly pileing up...but they kept coming. Johan, the sarcastic one, was on the radio with the airforce, I assumed he had taken back what he said earlier about them. Very little was availible to us but what was there was the last thing we needed, napalm. After a few minutes of argueing back and forth the airstrike was ordered. I remember being thrown to the ground just as the A10 dropped the canisters. It came back on strafing runs more than a few time leaving a deafining roar and death in its wake as the 30mm shells obilterated everything they touched.

It took us three hours to blast through the seven foot tall wall of corpses, the smell was overwhelmingly vile the entire area reeked of death, gasoline, and gunpowder. Gutree walked over to me as we continued the sweep to make sure all of the cretures were delt with he placed a hand on my shoulder and simply said "What do you think people are gonna say when they find this place huh?" giving a small laugh. As he walked over to gather up what he could with the rest of the men.

We left the scene of carnage only two hours after we had started, a few hundered corpses piled high and burning. As we settled in to a formation the men talking amongst themselves I walked beside the Sargent trying to keep my mind occupied when suddenly from the shadows of a small side street came the growl, it grabbed Sargent Gutree by the arm and had nearly delivered the fatal bite when a single shot rung out striking the creature in the forehead and dropping it to the ground. The Sargetn looked back with a look of sheer terror on his face seeing me with the smoking pistol. I smirked and said
"The people who find that place are gonna say we are some crazy motherfuckers."