Free Project Zulu by Fred Waltz Page B

bunkered down
thirty or forty feet away, off the road in the overgrowth of the swamp. He
orders the hoard to stop advancing, and to retreat approximately a quarter of a
mile. He will need to have the advantage of overwhelming manpower if he hopes
to have a chance against professional soldiers.
    As he is projecting his mind back, he catches a
glimpse of an image. He re-focuses his thoughts, and finds the mind of a new
zombie. This zombie is looking up at a bank of lights mounted to the ceiling.
Azaka takes over the zombies mind, and immediately experiences a déjà vu. This
is the creature he was trapped inside all those long years. He manipulates the creature’s
right hand, and loosens the straps keeping it to the table. Once free, Azaka
implants a single thought inside the creatures head. Roam the building,
freeing as many of your kind as you can, and kill every human you encounter.
    He releases the creature and walks outside the bar.
He approaches Old Glory and climbs on. Before pulling out onto the blacktop he
studies a car in the lot. He somehow knows that the car belongs to Amy, and he
also knows that Amy is not a member of his hoard, yet. He reaches into the
saddlebag strapped to Old Glory and pulls out the HK45CT pistol, and slips it
into his waistband.

Chapter 26
    Major Jeb Chonk is sprinting down the hallway toward
the elevator. Two minutes earlier he had been fighting a losing battle against
sleep; eyes narrowing to mere slits while his head was slowly drifting down
toward his chest, and then snapping back in a whiplashing motion. He would be
damned if he would allow himself to be caught sleeping by one of the men. He
slapped himself across the face a few times, got up, stomped his feet and
switched on the video monitor.
    He was still stomping his feet, trying to force the
fatigue from his body, when the video screen caught his attention. Is this a
live feed he thought to himself? He stared at the monitor a few more
seconds before his training took over. He grabbed a sidearm, a rifle and the
satellite phone and darted out of the room.
    The images on the monitor screen, that sent Major
Chonk sprinting away, shows the one handed zombie from the lower level, opening
up the doors to the medical wing, releasing all of the recently turned zombies.
    In the medical wing, three levels down, on the other
side of the cameras that were providing the images to the monitors in the
command room, all hell is breaking loose, figuratively and literally.
    Four soldiers are following a standard ‘tap and
cover’ retreat formation; falling back one at a time, ‘tapping’ the point man
on the helmet once they have passed him, the point man providing cover fire to
support the retreat. Somehow, the creatures that had been secured inside the
examination room have managed to escape. The six soldiers posted outside the
wing managed to contain them initially, but the problem occurred when the four
former security team members made their way down the hall. They were still
wearing uniforms, protective gear and carrying their weapons. It momentarily
confused the soldiers, and lead to their demise. Two quickly fell to the
onslaught, and the remaining four opted to retreat when they realized that
their bullets were doing nothing to slow down the creatures.
    The gunfire inside the narrow hallway was deafening.
As often happens, the four soldiers had panicked, forgotten the information
from the training briefing that only headshots could stop their attackers, and
were quickly expending all of the ammunition they had. The battle was playing
out in slow motion, the attackers moving slowly down the hallway and the
soldiers retreating one by one.
    The soldier on point covering the retreat was
unaware that his weapon had stopped firing, his hearing had long since been
compromised because of the close quarters fighting, and he was no longer able
to distinguish the sound of his weapon from the rest of his team’s. He
continued to pull the trigger, dry