The Weaponized Dead by Alex Mastroianni

He heard it before he saw it. The chorus of electric motors whirring. The broken glass and shards of sheet metal strewn through the streets of the town popped and crunched under tank-like treads. They had never been meant to do anything but mangle the feet of the dead and maybe slow them up. Catterick called them caltrops.

Chet raised his binoculars as the nearing dust cloud grew. They were small vehicles like bobcats, for construction. The lead vehicle was becoming more defined, Chet could make out a small digital camera where a driver would go, and a tall aerial.

He heard them microseconds before their dusty forms became visible. The lunatic, stroke-victim braying of undead hundreds. Chet could feel the color leave his face. he forced himself to peer through the field glasses again and the lead vehicle -- less than two clicks off now -- was ahead of the dust. Mounted on the back of the mini-tank was a huge spool of steel cable- maybe a hundred yards of it. The spool ended in a huge steel ring he could fit his head through. Locked to the ring were four twenty foot steel chains, all a half-inch thick. At the end of each chain, bound in a fashion that did not hinder its mobility but also held it fast, was a fighting, hungry ghoul.

Well, he thought, that's pretty fucking clever. After that Chet was pretty much on auto-pilot,a Buddha of objectivity. Before the death he was a chemical engineer, one of the minority of Americans whose profession was not rendered useless by the permanent state of apocalypse. As a man of science he prided himself on his ability to detach. It was no small thing to say it saved his sanity and his life.

Chet dug his scout's radio out of his pack. It was a cheapo two-way radio. he raised John Catterick, the Cooperatives default leader, on his private band. As he delivered sit-rep, almost certain that whoever was operating those things was listening in, he imagined he could hear the color drain from John's face.

In another life Chet and John were brother-in laws. They had been together when The Death broke out and John never saw his wife again like Chet never saw his sister. The last eight years had made them brothers in the agony of survival.

"Pull in all the scouts." John barked back over the two-way. 'All the scouts' was only Chet and a young girl everyone called Butter. Chet only met her three days ago on scout duty. She was part of a clutch of ragged refugees who somehow made it to the Cooperative camp two weeks ago. "Chet, when you raise that kid, I want you to give her the private band."

"We hardly know her, John. she could be a Municipality mole." John hadn't warmed to Butter. What kind of a name is that? Not falling over himself to trust anybody who came wandering into camp is what kept him alive these eight years. Catterick was the polar opposite. His faith in people was both a strength and a fault. It was what made him a great leader.

"Butter?" Chet spoke into the open channel. No response. he felt stupid saying such a name. "Butter. Copy?" Nothing. "Keep Trying" John barked. he was on the public band now too. "Try spotting her. You know where she was posted? Copy" Chet did know. Se should be west of him about a half click. The encroaching ghoul tanks were a now a click northwest and would come right between him and Butter. An idea hatched in Chet's head. Find the girl first.

Chet raised his binoculars, though now he could see the tanks naked eye, to get a bearing on their progress. A month ago he and John had spray painted huge white X's on the streets of the town at each kilometer from the camp gate. the first tank was nearing the closest X. It seemed they were moving slower than when Chet first spotted them. The tanks were probably difficult to steer without running over the four zombies leashed to it. He could see the whole body of vehicles now. There were about twenty-five of them. That made one hundred ghouls on leashes of a hundred yards each. He imagined those steel cable spools could be let out. He watched the fresh ghouls fight their chains. They pulled at them in a hungry dance. Taut. Slack. Taut. Slack. it looked like all of the dead were runners, which meant they were fresh.

Only the very decayed ghoul shambled about. A freshly flipped body, with a deal of moisture still in its muscles and its motor nerves still mostly functional, could run and climb as well as any living person. Better, in fact, since they did not fatigue or ache. One hundred of them. A sick half-thought nagged at Chet for a second. Something was very wrong, apart from the obvious, that he didn't follow yet.

Chet swung his binoculars west-ward to scan the rooftops for Butter. There. She was on the laundromat waving her radio above her head with her left hand. this was sign for a broken radio. Something inside Chet's stomach turned to liquid nitrogen.

"John, Copy. Her radio is down. Copy." panic was edging its way into his voice. "Shit, Chester. I need her." This puzzled Chet. She was just some raggedy-ass kid. "Why, John?". Catterick didn't aswer right away. "Chet, you weren't there when we found her."

The camp was less than a kilometer off. It was probably them who painted these huge white X's in the street. her throat was beyond dry. Die or make it to the camp. There's always a choice. Something in the alley, between the deli and the pizza place. The people she had happened into had no noise discipline, just as she was turning , index finger on her lips, they exploded from the alley. Seven fresh ghouls, their blue hungry lips cracking over wide open jaws. They went for a middle-aged woman, who was limping slightly behind everyone else. They dog piled on her and began taking chunks out of her back and shoulders. She took one out with her .32 Beretta, right in its left ear. This drew the notice of the other six, their last meal already dead and flipping.

The rest of the group? Shit. They bugged out for the camp gates. Two ghouls flew by, blurs of gray and red, pursuing the shrieking runners. Another slug for the middle-aged women, her eyes wild with altered death as she just began to rise. The dead paused in a coiled pounce. One charged her and she pulled the trigger to a hollow click. Time became like glue as the ghouls closed the distance to her, running in an adrenaline molasses. She was acutely aware of the full clip in her jacket pocket. How could she let that happen? With perfect timing she sidestepped the first runner and kicked the back of his knee. It went down hard on the back of its head. It didn't die, but the dead are as susceptible to concussions as we are and the bastard sure as shit wasn't getting up too fast.

She pivoted and ran for a close dumpster, on top of it in one jump. She got the clip in her hand and reloaded the Beretta so fast she did not even recall doing it. She spun on a possibly fractured ankle and opened up with the pistol. She knew she caught three, before the other three's heads exploded. Instinctively, she jumped down off the dumpster, making herself as small as possible. Someone was firing on the ghouls besides her. This didn't mean they wouldn't fire on her. It seemed like a year passed before she heard a faint foghorn, or loudspeaker, bleating in staccato:

Long, short, long, short.


Long, long, long.


Long, long.


Short.

Morse code: COME. It repeated twice. A ploy? Hesitantly, she rose from the compressed crouch she was in, her left ankle aching but maybe not broken. She chanced a look at the direction of the camp. between her and the camp, a man waved a 30.06 Rifle over his head. he was on the roof of a not yet visible building. Was she safe? And what happened to her travelling companions? A nanosecond of malice flashed through her brain. She recalled the image of them running while that woman was savaged. The thought to stay and fight occurring only to her.

" So she can shoot. Big deal, John." Catterick's quick-to-trust mentality always irked him. especially, for some reason, with this kid. Who was she? Chet thought. According to Catterick, who watched her handling of a pack of dead two weeks ago, the girl could handle herself better than most. That's it! Chet realized what was bothering him about Butter. "John. She obviously has military training. She almost certainly, from what you told me, is Municipality. The Gray Berets, or whatever." The Municipality was a group of government and law enforcement remnants that, over the past five years, have been trying to consolidate their control of what was the United States. The Gray Berets were the crack ghoul suppression squads of the Municipality. It was said they also brought autonomous clutches of survivors to heel. The Cooperative was the largest of such groups. Chet Waters and John Catterick would say they didn't found the Cooperative. They'd say it founded itself, it evolved. After the first real bug-out, isolated groups of survivors linked only by short wave radio began to clear out the corridors of ghoul infested in-fill between one another. Eventually this became the Cooperative. The nation of disenfranchised survivors who stayed while the military, their neighbors, and the rest of America ran like hell when the dead began rising eight years ago.

"She is ex-municipality, Chet. She's an insub." Chet could not believe it. An insubordinate was a Gray Beret that refused to fight survivors. They were founded and trained as ghoul hunters, not shock troopers. "John, how could you? You endangered the whole camp. Nine thousand people! I'm not going along with this, I say we shut her..." Chet's radio exploded in rage. "You'll say shit Chet! Now get to her and get to the gate. I'm watching, Chet. I need her to get me one of those ghoul tanks intact! And you're gonna help her!" Jesus.

"Okay, John. okay." Chet shouldered his pack as he talked into the radio. At the same time he puzzled out how he would accomplish the taking of a ghoul tank. "I'm leaving now. And John?"
"Yes Chet?" he signaled Butter with a series of hand signs. Meet me at the camp gate on the double. "If i survive this. I'm questioning the girl. Not 'we'. I'm questioning her alone."
"Christ, Chet.." Chet wanted to relent. He hated going head to head with John Catterick.
"You want this done?" The radio crackled while Catterick held down the 'Talk' button on his end. "Okay, fine.". Chet looked at the roof where Butter was and saw she was gone. She is pretty fucking fast. He dropped a rope ladder down the side of the building and was on the ground and running fast. He could feel the engines of the tanks through his worn sneaker soles. They were less than click away, the braying of the dead audible over the engines, the crunching and popping of road debris, over everything. Chet had a theory about ghoul moans. How was it they could always be heard over anything else?

He hoped Butter was making for the gate. he hoped Catterick schooled her in the scout hand signs. His eyes stung. There was a visible hovering of dust in the air, kicked up by the treads of the encroaching ghoul tanks. Running, he turned a corner too fast and stumbled onto the main avenue leading to the camp gate. getting up, he looked behind himself to see that he was now in the direct path of the tanks. The lead one began to veer to the right. All the tanks cleared away from the middle of the street. The ghouls of one tank saw or smelled him and began fighting their steel harness even harder, they surged in front of the tank they were tethered to. The chains the were leashed to gave them just enough distance to get in front of the tank. In their frenzy, they were pulled under the tank treads in an explosion of gray meat and decomposition gasses. The sight froze Chet where he stood. he screamed inside his head for his legs to move. Why am I so terrified?

Just then a hand came down on his shoulder. Chet spun and drew his pistol, a Canadian P14-.45. It was Butter. She didn't even register that she had a .45 in her face. "Chet? Let's go. Her gaze went over his shoulder. No quite out if his panic torpor, Chet followed her stare. The tanks seem to have picked up speed, and most of them were hugging the sides of the avenue. Now they saw why.

It had to have been in the center of the pack. The dust kicked up by the other tanks hid it. It was no larger than its companions, but on the front of it was a cylinder of seven foot pieces of rebar welded solid. It was probably filled with rocks and metal. The end of it had a manhole cover with six inch cuts of rebar welded on the striking surface. at the business end a small axle with two tires held the thing up. The tank it was attached couldn't hold a huge iron spike the diameter of a manhole by itself. spray painted on the manhole was a red 'M'. Fucking Munies, thought Chet.

Butter slung her short-barreled M1 Carbine with a scope off of her shoulder. She seemed to be taking aim. "Butter!" Chet was yelling over the ghouls now, they were that close. "Let's get to the fucking gate." She ignored him and fired. The battering tank was about 100 yards off. Chet could barely see that she had disabled the small coaxial camera used by whomever controlled the thing.What a fucking shot! She glowered at Chet. "My name is Joan Butterfield. Stop calling me Butter, all of you."

The tank still had its aerial and could still be controlled , albeit blindly. It began to veer to the right, where the heavy steel gate, made of office doors welded together by a grate of steel pipes, met a masonry wall made of mortar and chunks of building debris.

Chet was frozen, like he was staring down the careening tank; playing chicken. Unhampered by chained zombies, it was moving pretty fast. Joan grabbed his shoulder, and they both dived out of the way. Even the other ghoul tanks had stopped, their far away pilots watching the drama through camera lenses. Chet, Joan, and the other defenders amassed along the wall's ramparts watched the tank meet the right door of the gate and a two foot thick stone wall in surreal adrenaline slowness. This, thought Chet, This will drown out the ghouls.

He was right. Chet and Joan were only twenty feet away from the impact. Chet was knocked out cold by a chunk of concrete foundation that was mortared into the wall. He came to in a frenzy the hands gripping him felt like the grabby gray hands of the dead, and he fought them wildly, concussed. Somebody slapped him in the face and he opened his eyes. They were full of blood and he saw double a little, but he could make out Joan and some of the wall defenders. He looked around and saw the right door of the gate hanging jagged and ajar. A good chunk of the wall was gone but it still met the hinges. The door could be dragged closed, but the wrecked tank blocked its action. As Chet came to, he heard the engines of the ghoul tanks come back to life, their passengers- able to see their quarry now- fought their chain harnesses wildly. The smashed gate would not let a tank through, but a crowd of leashed ghouls could pile in easily. Close up the gate. Chet was thinking on how to do this when somebody on the wall rampart called his name. It was Catterick.

"John! Get the cars that're inside the camp to block the open gate. Maybe that short school bus could cover it on its own!"

Catterick was frantic, barking orders aloud and into the radio, Chet observed. This was the man he would follow to hell. This cool and collected leader quelling panic and organizing a defense all at once. Then Chet heard a sound that could curdle spinal fluid.

It was like one hundred cell doors slamming home in unison. The spools of steel cable were all released simultaneously with a loud clank. The tanks themselves had stopped ten or so yards from the front gate. The tethered ghouls closed the distance fast, a gray and crimson crowd trailing clinking chains. Chet was paralyzed by the wave of dead coming right at him. Still dizzy, he stumbled as Joan pulled him inside the gate. The wall defenders were waiting for them to get inside to open fire.

The braying of the ghouls and the engines and the clanking chains drowned out the rifle reports, to Chet it looked like dead craniums were just spontaneously exploding. "Joan, we need to set up an enfilade right here at the gate, forget sealing it up if we can.."

"A bottleneck! Okay." She waved a few defenders to where the wall met the wrecked gate and they got the idea pretty quick. Ghouls were coming through the wreckage of the gate and the smashed tank packed shoulder to shoulder. Chet and Joan were at ground level and were taking them out point blank as the wormed through the wreck. For the briefest of moments Chet allowed himself to think he would survive this day. We got this!

Then something unanticipated started to happen The slack steel cable and felled zombies were piling up. Combined with the totaled tankand the rubble of the wall, this made a gently sloping ramp up to the wall. The breached gate was clogged with undead meat, and the hill of metal and corpses was like a welcome mat to the remain ghoul dozens. One was on the wall and then twenty were on the wall. Some were falling over into the camp. It's a bad ratio thought Chet. He had, years ago made up an equation of sorts. If the oncoming ghouls are swarming faster than you can clear a jam or reload, survival is unlikely. "Shit!" he grabbed Joan's sleeve and they fell back to get a better view of the havoc on the wall. Blood.Bodies. Rifles clutched in hands that forgot how to use them, being newly undead. "Clean off the wall, I've got to find Catterick" Chet took off looking for John Catterick. I may never see that girl again.

Joan was a killer shot. when she didn't hid the head, she hit the neck, severing the spine. But even an ex- Gray Beret couldn't juggle this mess. The wall defenders were reanimating, and the lack of living people on the wall was making the dead jump down into the camp in search of a meal. One got within a yard of her while she cleared a jam. They were coming faster than she could take them. Dammit. A ghoul, one of the wall gunners, got hold of her ankles, she had not seen it. It must have broken its legs dropping from the wall onto the paved lot at the edge of the beach and then dragged itself to her. She stumbled and went down, cursing the ankle she sprained weeks ago. She put one in the ghoul but had to spend time braking its fingers off her ankle. She looked up to see a dozen more fall of the wall and hit the ground running, all locked on her. She was about to put the barrel of her .32 under her chin when their heads began exploding. She rolled over prone to avoid crossfire to see about twenty ten or twelve year old boys and girls with .22 hunting rifles mowing down the ghouls. Behind them she could she Chet and Catterick.

There was a lull in the onslaught of the dead, and a young boy helped her up. Why did they stop coming? Before she could answer her own question she heard the dragging of chains. The tanks were pulling back, Their ghouls all downed.

Joan jumped to her feet. "Chet! Chet! the tanks, they're falling back!" They ran and began to scale the mound of bodies and wreckage at the broken gate.Joan caught a chain in the shoulder as it snapped, the corspes too piled up to be reeled back in by a winch.The chains were giving out. But the tanks had some way of releasing the spools of cable, and one by one they just fell off the back of the vehicles. In unison the turned on their treads and, unencumbered by raging zombies, hightailed out of there.. They both looked at eachother and thought the same thing, oh no you don't, fuckers.

Even with a bum ankle she caught up to the last tank, Chet having shot out its camera as she ran up on it from the side. She jumped atop the thing and pulled out a hunting knife, cutting the wire leading from the aerial to the controls, the tank jerked to a halt. There was nothing inside the thing that a person could steer it with. The tanks could only be radio controlled. panting, Chet came running pell mell around the huge spools of cable and felled ghouls.Catching his breath, he finished a thought he had at the start of this thing "Why did they do this, Joan? Why not just hit us with artillery? You were with'em, you know they have it. And where would they got so many fresh..."

"Intimidiation. Where do you think they got so many fresh ghouls? Chet, the fuckers infected people delibrately!" The implication of this felt like ice in his chest. "I knew they were doing something. the Municipality has this R&D ranch, and they had us Grays taking survivors alive. we were ordered specifically to take them alive. I didn't know then what they were doing but I suspected something horrible. Maybe I was shutting out the obvious." Her eyes were welling up. Something in Chet's throat ached. "I never imagined this." She swept an arm at the havoc around them in the street. "Joan.." Chet began "I'm sorry I suspected you of anything. I'm not like John, I can't see the good inherent in people, and after this, well..." He looked her in the eyes square. "I'm sorry".

For a full minute the two of them just stood there, fighting down sobs."Don't go all estrogen on me, Chet." They both laughed. The two of them laughing, surrounded by rot and horror. "This was just a warning, Chet. Make sure John knows. the Munies were just dipping a toe in the water.The 'll be back and it will be worse" Chet looked off at the dust cloud of the retreating tanks and a shudder went to his core. We must've lost thirty people today.

"Okay, lets get something to tow this fucking tank. And don't tell anyone I cried" Joan smiled knowingly. "Likewise."