Free Zombie Killers: Ice & Fire by John Holmes, Ryan Szimanski

picture popped up on the screen, taken as we moved into the town. The Stewarts shop was still smoldering, putting a cloud of smoke over the whole area. 
    “As you can see,” and the pictured changed to corpses laying scattered around on the street “the new BB rounds were effective in causing significant effects. Proceeding through town, we were only engaged by less than a half dozen undead.”
    “OUTSTANDING!” said Jackass, and he clapped his hands together. “Outfriggingstanding!”
    “May I continue, Sir?” He was in a great mood now.
    “Carry on, Sergeant.”
    “We proceeded on to a four story brick structure which had given indication that it might contain survivors.” The next picture was of a little girl, her face shattered by shrapnel. I clicked on to the next one, a shot of Staff Sergeant Guido, his leg tied off, face pale, blood spilled from his mouth.
    A mummer went around the tent. “That was unconfirmed” said Jackass. “We had no way of knowing.”
    I clicked on more pictures, providing a voice overlay to the carnage.
    “ We estimated that there were approximately two dozen men, women and children survivors. Before he died from wounds received in the artillery barrage, a survivor told us that they were National Guardsmen who had managed to survive, but that our helicopter patrols had drawn the zombies to this end of the valley, trapping them.”
    “Now hold on a minute, Sergeant. What are you insinuating?” The Colonel’s face had grown livid.
    “What I’m saying is that if you had sent a Chinook in, we could have evacuated them, instead of you being so damn eager to use your new toys.” I was getting hot, and I almost yelled at him.
    He got up and got in my face. “I don’t like your tone, Sergeant!”
    I turned away to calm down, and Doc went to put his hand on me to steady me. Behind me on the screen the picture had returned to the little girl with the bloody tear in her face. I looked it at for a second, and the face on the screen changed into my dead daughters’ face, blood leaking from it.
    Before Doc could stop me, I turned around and threw a right cross that caught Colonel Jackass right in the jaw. He went down, crashing over the folding chair behind him. I jumped on him, but before I could land another punch, I felt Doc’s weightlifter arms wrap around me and drag me off of him. He lifted me up bodily and carried me out of the tent, and dumped me in the snow.
    The Operations Officer, Major Flynn, came out of the tent. “Hamilton, get his ass out of here! NOW! In fact, I want your entire team off the base in the next half hour. I don’t care where you go, just get out of here before I have you all arrested.” Behind him stood two Privates with MP armbands, pistols drawn.
    I stood up and brushed some the snow off me. I had split my knuckles on his teeth, and drops of blood stained the snow.
    “Oh boy, you screwed the pooch now, Nick” said Doc.
    I looked at my hand as we hustled over to the medic tent to gather up the rest of the team. “They won’t arrest us, they need us too badly. He deserved it, murdering prick.”

Chapter 21
    We headed toward the East Gate into a raging snowstorm that had blown up. Out into the Wild, Wild East. Doc walked next to me, and the rest of the team came along, both Brit and Jonesy limping, Ahmed looking to the rear every few seconds to see if we were being followed. I motioned for them to follow me, and we ducked between two tents.
    “OK, here’s the plan” I said. “We obviously can’t walk out of here with you two in the shape you’re in, and if we stay here, I’m going to get arrested.”
    Jonesy let out a laugh. “Way to go, Mike Tyson! Felt good, didn’t it?”
    I grinned. ”Yeah, it did. But here’s the deal. I think Major Flynn will be able to buy us a little time, but we gotta go” and I explained my plan to them.
    In the end, it was easy. Doc and Ahmed walked over to the motor pool, pulled out a set of bolt cutters, and