Zombie Theorem (Book 4): Aces Mortis Read online

  Zombie Theorem

  Aces Mortis

  Book 4

  By James Wallace

  Dedicated to Joyce Stokley, whom we lost this year. May she live long in the hearts of those that loved her.

  ****

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment upon purchase. This eBook may not be traded or sold to other people. If you want to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this but did not purchase it, please return it to where you got it from. Thanks for respecting this author’s work.

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  Thank you for reading!

  ****

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the following, whom without I would never have published any of my awesome books. Tanay Williams, my best friend, I can’t live without her (No really!). The Allen brother’s Will and M.C. (Malleus Publishing), Mike “The Machine” Evans, Ricky Fleet (My Daisy), Laura and Josh Jarvis. My editor Jocelyn Hollman, Chase P Weggeland (My awesome book cover and tattoo artist!), Thomas and Tina Watson and all my friends on Facebook. To my Beta Readers; Leslie Bryant (Momma), Jon Spielman (The mad American German), William Beedie (Kilt wearing, Scotch drinking Scotsman) Maly “Peach” Copeland, Melanie “Posh” Langham, and Denise “I am the Queen” Keef. thank you for all your help, support, and kind words.

  J Wallace’s Author Page on Facebook

  You can contact the Author by emailing him at: [email protected]

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 1

  The day had started well for Aces. They had inserted by a HALO, high altitude low opening, parachute insertion from a high flying C-130, into the desert. They landed within sight of each other and luckily no injuries. They gathered their chutes and buried them into the hard packed ground, then humped it ten miles through the scorching heat to the coordinates given to them before the mission started. They moved like avenging wraiths through the scrub brush and rocks. After belly crawling up a small rise which over looked their objective, they dug in and started their overwatch of the camp below. The camp was surrounded by a six-foot chain link fence topped with a double strand of razor wire, the kind that could grate you into cheese if you tried to go over it.

  Team lead Lieutenant, Chun ignored the small rocks he was laying on and the annoying, biting insects that crawled over his body. His blue steely eyes swept the camp and surrounding area looking for anything out of place or movement. He moved so slow and with such carefulness that not a rock or plant was disturbed as he keyed his mic and spoke quietly but not in a whisper. The harsh S sounds from whispering could be heard much more easily than just speaking quietly. This had been droned into him by his instructors for years and was second nature to him now.

  “Aces one to Aces two, how copy? Over.”

  “Aces one we have you five by five, over.” Came back the reply in his headset.

  “Roger, how does it look from your position? Over.”

  “Very quiet down there, Aces one. You sure we have the right camp? Over.”

  They had been observing the camp for two days now and had not seen any movement at all. Chun figured the camp guards were lazy and stayed inside, enjoying the air conditioning. But as more time went by he became unsure. He put his glasses down and massaged the bridge of his nose. This was unlike Chun, he was the kind of leader who was sure of his decisions and never questioned himself. Now here he was unsure of what to do. He pulled his hand down and activated his radio.

  “Blakk, Hootie, and Hashkeh I want you guys to go down there and do a sneak and peek and report back, over.” He let go of the radio and heard the tsk tsk sound come back as affirmatives from the three men.

  Chun rolled over and put his eye to the scope of his .300 Win Mag sniper rifle. He ran his scope over the two buildings in the camp, looking intensely for any sign of habitation. All the windows he examined were covered by curtains and gave away no clue of what they hid behind them. A quiet voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “Chun, Hootie, Blakk, and Hashkeh made it past the fence and are making entrance on the little building,” the voice came from Chun’s Master Chief on the team. A hulk of a man named Butch, his bald head hidden under a dark grey cover and face blacked out in grease.

  “Excellent, keep a watch on them. Order Pico and Rascal to check our six, I don’t want to be surprised,” Chun grimaced over the anxiety trying to force its way into his head.

  Butch crawled from their position to give the order to the men under his command. Butch thought Chun was a great leader, one which any of the men would sacrifice their lives for. He had led them through any number of missions and made sure each one came home. Maybe beat up and sporting some new holes, but they always came home. Butch being the NCO, or non-commissioned officer of the team, took great pride in his men but he was old school and at forty-one he was considered the old man of the teams. He never wrote his men up for their mistakes, he preferred the way his father doled out punishment when he was in the Seals. He would knock them around and use colorful language as his way of getting his point across. reason to ruin the career of a man under his command, so many other leaders nowadays pushed paper and that never worked. But stomp a mud hole in a man, and he would make sure he never made the offending mistake again. All the men who had served with him had gone on to run their own teams and thanked Butch for his leadership.

  Chun was a wet behind the balls FNG (Fucking New Guy) when Butch had met him. He was the reason behind Chun going to OCS (Officer Candidate School) and become the officer in charge of the Anti-Terrorist elite tier one team. Chun dragged Butch out of the regular Seal teams and into the esteemed Seal Team Six platoon. When shit needed to get done and no others could do the job, the President called in these guys. They didn’t know how to fail, they would do anything to succeed. After five years of working together, they had become a family.

  “Pico, Rascal, the Lt wants you to circle around to our rear and make sure we are secure,” the two men nodded affirmative and disappeared into the surrounding scrub brush.

  Hashkeh, Blakk, and Hootie were so different from one another, yet worked the best together out of the team. Hootie was a small bald black man, thin but wiry with muscle. He trained during his free time to be a UFC fighter someday. He was fast and vicious, no one on the team except Butch and Hashkeh would spar with him. Most of the time they came away from those sessions with new bruises and tweaked joints. Hashkeh was the opposite, he was almost as big as Butch, standing at just a hair under six foot five. He was a gym rat and was always found during his free time pounding weights and running marathons. He was one of the two men on the team who wore his hair long. It hung to the middle of his back and he wore it in two tight braids and tied back with leather thongs. He was born on a Navajo reservation in southern Utah to two poor parents. He learned how to track, hunt, and be as one with nature from his grandfather. His real name was Hashkeh Naabah which in Navajo meant Angry Warrior, but the guys just called him Hashkeh. Blakk was the oddball out of the team. He reminded everyone he met as a geek, he had a slight figure, no real muscle tone. You would never know by looking at him that he was a sharpshooter with his SR-25 7.62 Rifle manufactured by Knight's Armament Company. When doing these little sneak and peeks though, he relied on his HK 416 carbine for clearing rooms and was one of the best shots in the team, as well as the techno
weenie. He was a wizard with anything hosting a microchip. He could hack most systems and coded in multiple computer languages.

  Blakk stacked up next to his teammates at the door of the building and waited for the entry signal. Hashkeh reached his arm across the door from his position and slowly tested the door handle. He found it unlocked and moved it easily. He pushed down and held the handle in the open position and gave Hootie a look. Hootie nodded and pulled his HK MP7a1 Sub Machine Gun chambered in 4.6mm by 30mm to his shoulder and stood just outside the door crouched slightly, knees bent. Blakk stood his position with his HK 416 in the ready position barrel pointed to the ground, buttstock snugly in his armpit. Hashkeh yanked the door open and stepped back, bringing his M1014 Shotgun to bear. Neither of the guns were loaded with live rounds, for this exercise the Army guys would not play with the Seals if they used them. The Seals always used live rounds even in practice but this time their Commander agreed with the Army and had the Seals go in with a new type of round which carried a paint substance in them. They called it Simm Ammo. The Seals hated the rounds, they complained that the recoil felt off and they had to clean their weapons even more than usual due to the carbon and paint residue.

  Hootie moved in quick and silent, stepping to his left and freeing Blakk’s sight picture of the right side of the room. Blakk moved fast and stepped to his right allowing Hashkeh to come in down the middle and cover the center of the room. The way they moved was like a dangerous ballet they had rehearsed a thousand times. The common room was a mess, furniture broken and lying throughout the room. What caught their attention though was the carnal house of dead bodies and blood covering everything including the walls. The Seals were professionals and tried to memorize every detail, this could be a psych mission. They had seen something like this before, the command structure wanted to see how they could still do their jobs even when faced with the unbelievable. They moved through the room and counted 6 bodies. Everyone they found had been mutilated so badly, as if a wild animal had attacked and ripped into them. Hashkeh took lead and moved through the small building, looking in corners and checking behind doors for anyone alive and moving. Blakk stayed by the entrance while Hootie stood in the middle of the room, covering Hashkeh as he moved around.

  Hashkeh came back to Hootie and shook his head once side to side. They walked backwards toward the exit and Blakk. Once there, Blakk moved outside and swept the area around them for movement. Finding none, he clucked his tongue and the two others came out of the building shutting the door and securing it with a wedge that Hootie produced from his vest. He kicked it into the bottom of the door making it close to impossible to open from inside. They looked back to Chun’s position and Hashkeh shook his head side to side and then made a motion with the flat of his hand across his neck and then held both hands palm out and fingers spread, showing all ten. He had just told Chun that they found 6 dead bodies inside the building and no one alive.

  The three of them crept across the compound grounds and up to the door of the only other building that was close to triple in size than the first. It also had a rear door, which needed to be covered. Blakk hand signaled that he would take the rear position as Hashkeh and Hootie made entrance through the front door. He peeled away from the group and made a beeline for his position. Hashkeh waited at the front entrance and through hand signs, worked out how they would enter the building and clear it with only the two of them. Hashkeh stood to the left side of the door as Hootie took the right. Hootie tested the doorknob and found it unlocked like the other building. He nodded three times to Hashkeh and swung the door open. Hashkeh didn’t waste a second, he raised his shotgun and rushed into the room moving to his right. Hootie lifted his HK MP7a1 and rushed in going to his left and sweeping the barrel to the left and then to the middle of the room. He stopped after one sweep and had to take a step back, bumping his pack and back against the wall. Hashkeh took in a sharp intake of breath and had to stop himself from spewing his stomach juices all over the room.

  If the last building was bad, this one was a thousand times worse. The scene in front of them was not staged or a part of a psych op. They saw body parts littered about the room and men dressed in BDUs, battle dress uniforms, pulling intestines from others on the ground and stuffing them into their mouths. Blood pooled in the middle of the room and covered everything. Just then they heard the back door open and close. No way was Blakk entering the building, he was to stay outside and guard the exit. Hashkeh turned his head and caught Hootie’s eyes. They seemed as wide in shock as his own must be. Hashkeh cocked his head to the door they had just entered and they both nodded at each other in agreement. They backed out slowly, closed and secured the door with another wedge and took off at a dead sprint toward Blakk’s position.

  They closed fast, and were astonished at the scene they found when they arrived. A soldier laid on his back in the dirt as Blakk worked at delivering first aid, stuffing bandages onto the man’s abdomen. Trying hard to stop or slow down the pouring blood from a massive tear in his belly. Blakk had removed his helmet and laid it next to him as he bent over working. Hashkeh moved quickly to stand by Blakk’s side and offered support while Hootie stood guard over them covering the compound with his useless gun, when the soldier sat up, knocking Blakk down to the ground. He grabbed Blakk’s head and darted in fast, biting into the soft flesh of his neck. He pulled back ripping free a big piece of flesh, blood, and muscle. Blakk screamed at the top of his lungs and pulled away from the soldier and shoving his hands to the wound in his neck pressing hard, trying to staunch the blood flow and life source pouring out around him.

  Hashkeh hesitated for one moment then moved in, placing his boot on the soldier’s chest and holding him to the ground. The soldier was small in stature but put up such a fight twisting and grabbing onto Hashkeh’s leg that he almost lost his balance and fell to the ground. But Hootie moved in and brought his gun’s buttstock against the soldier’s forehead. He must’ve put too much into the bash because it broke through the soldier’s skull, exposing the brain. The soldier stopped moving and laid the sleep of death. Hashkeh looked spooked and wide eyed, he moved backward away from the soldier and looked up to the building in front of them.

  Hootie took the initiative and broke radio silence. “Lieutenant, we got some big fucking problems down here. Have someone meet us at the fence and get it open, Blakk is hurt. Over,” he reached down and grabbed the handle on the back of Blakk’s armor. He started dragging the man across the dirt and was halfway to the fence when Hashkeh came to his senses and appeared next to him.

  He placed a bandage on Blakk’s throat and moved Blakk’s hands to it to hold it into place. He then lifted the man into the air and put him across his massive shoulders. Hootie joined him by his side and they ran to the fence, where Butch met them, already holding back the chain link fence where he had cut it open. Both men squeezed through and joined Butch as he led them back to Chun.

  Hashkeh placed Blakk down gently on the ground at Chun’s feet and then stepped back and stripped his blood drenched blouse off. He discarded it and washed his skin with rubbing alcohol and shrugged into a new blouse. Chun dropped to his knees with Butch at his side and went into medic mode, checking on the wound and administrating alcohol and a powder onto the leaking wound.

  “This can’t be stitched, not enough skin to close. Place some more bandages on it and get it wrapped around his shoulders to hold it in place,” Chun looked up to Hootie and Hashkeh. “What in Christ’s church happened?”

  “Lt, it was a fucking carnal house down there,” Hootie wiped the sweat from his head. “We made entrance on the small building and found what we thought was a psych op. Dead bodies and buckets of blood everywhere. We backed out and secured the door, and moved to the next objective. Hashkeh and I took the front entrance while Blakk moved to the rear and covered the exit. After making entrance we found a worse scene than the building before. Body parts everywhere and soldiers ripping parts from others and eating them.
We made the call not to work the room and went out the door we went in and secured it. We heard the back door open and rushed to Blakk’s side who was administering first aid to a soldier with a bad belly wound. I kept watch as Hashkeh moved in to help but the soldier sat up and bit a chunk out of Blakk’s throat. Hashkeh tried to hold the soldier down with his boot but he continued to jerk and spasm trying to get free. I panicked and moved in, bashing the soldier’s head in with my buttstock. We then exfiltrated and here we are,” Hootie took a knee and removed his canteen from his pack and took a big swallow.

  Chun reached out and patted Hootie’s head. “You guys did a great job. I am going to break radio silence and try and contact command to let them know what we found and request a ride out of here,” Chun took a deep breath and moved off to make the call. He laid down next to his rifle and removed a sat phone out of his pack. He dialed the number he had memorized and waited for someone to pick up. A series of clicks and whistles emanated and then a digitized ringing sound came out the speaker. After fifteen rings, Chun disconnected and pulled out a backup radio from his bag. He turned it on and dialed in the correct channel for command. “Aces six to River come in. Over,” he called out another five more times but no one answered him. He changed channels and tried contacting the flight crew that dropped them off. He got nothing no matter what channel he tried. Butch sat down and looked over to him.

  “What’s the situation, Lt?”

  “A whole bag of uncircumcised dicks, Master Chief,” Chun pulled his bag closer to him and stuffed the radio back into it.

  Butch eyed him for a moment and looked down to the compound. The back door must’ve been sprung because he saw some of those things down there moving around, dragging body parts and intestines behind them. “Well, I don’t think we should stay here. If no one is going to send a ride for us, then I guess we need to hump it out of here on foot,” he pulled the shotgun he had strapped to his pack to his front and looked down at it. “And thanks to the whiney Army bastards we have no ammo. And that makes these things as useful as tits on a bull,” he bowed his head and sighed.