I’m still afraid of them, sometimes. Sometimes they’re hidden in trees or bunkers, with can-openers that could peel back a Rhino’s side plate and turn the entire crew into pasta sauce given the chance.
But nowadays they’re no longer the grim reaper incarnate when they pop out in front of you.
They’re just Crunchies.
—Unknown Tanker
—
He sat in the commander’s seat, overlooking the column of panzers and armored vehicles that comprised his newly formed kampfgruppe. The air thick with the smell of burnt monster corpses and det cord.
On his right, a pair of M31s dug into the gore and debris-filled ground with their dozer blades, pilling burnt charcoal, charred bone and crumbling chittin into piles. Stars knew what they would do with them; digging a mass grave would take days.
Lieutenant Borysenko tapped the bone conduction mic around his throat, which allowed his voice to be heard crystal-clear even during the heat of battle. Hardly necessary…hopefully for the entire duration of the mission. The last time the equipment had proven necessary, his panzer had to be dragged out of the combat zone by an armored recovery vehicle.
“Odin-5, this is Butcher-1-5. All elements are green. Just waiting for your say-so.”
The comm clicked, and seconds later a familiar voice came on the airwave.
He gulped. “Understood, Odin-5. Moving out.”
Shifting to the platoon comms, he steeled his voice. “All elements, this is Butcher-1-5. We are Oscar Mike in thirty seconds, get warmed up.”
It was then that another voice came on the local comms.
Borysenko looked towards the rear of his platoon, where three personnel carriers and a pair of Demolishers idled by. They comprised one of just two engineer platoons inside the kampfruppe, with the latter kept in the rear of the column.
“No promises, Sapper-3.” He replied, not quite in the mood for jokes.
Being the vanguard of the vanguard was a weighty role, even for him. Fortunately, he didn’t have much time to consider all the ways the op could go wrong.
“Driver, advance to the western gate” He ordered.
“Copy.” Hans replied, and the Nutcracker tracks dug against the crusty dirt, propelling the sixty-ton war machine forward.
Only a few hundred meters later, his platoon split in half, giving way for Butcher-3’s Demolishers to clear the way. His section took up the right flank, checking the trees and bushes for monsters while the demolishers tore a path through the overgrown excuse of a garden towards the western gate.
It took little over five minutes to tear a path to the rusted iron gate, which was enconcsed in a red brick-and-mortar frame decorated with the some kind of silver plaque on either side. The characters seemed familiar, though he couldn’t make sense of the writing.
Thankfully, that was the spooks’ job. His was to make a path through the gate, one way or another.
“Butcher-3, I doubt command is in the mood for us to play burglar with that rusted lock. Would you guys do the honor of tearing this sad excuse of a gate down.” He asked through the radio.
The lead Demolisher gunned its engine, sixty tons of steel, chobham and dozer blade crashing against the once-working gate. It held for a second more, even as thick vines and overgrowth snapped and tore under the panzer’s momentum. Then the hinges gave way, bolts shearing clean off.
A loud crash signalled the end of isolation for the garden, the gate fragmented into rusty scraps while the cobblestone road underneath cracked under the impact.
“Odin-5, this is Butcher-1-5. Gate is down, we’re Oscar Mike to checkpoint Rubicon.”
The four panzers of 1st Platoon advanced through the opening two at a time, turning north. The gate’s remains creaked and cracked under the pressure, but Borysenko’s attention was focused elsewhere.
A handful of zombies, dressed in tattered and torn clothes, walked or crawled out of the buildings on the other side of the road. The undead were responsing fast.
“We’ve got crunchies on the road. Heavy stubbers, clear them out.” He ordered on the local commnet, making sure Sapper-3 and the proceeding platoons heard him.
TUTUTUTUTUT
Sergeant Garcia was already on-task, the gunner sporting a gleeful smile as he raked rotten flesh and weathered brick alike with .50 caliber stubber fire. Borysenko joined in with the .50 cal slaved to his own remote weapons station, firing short bursts at anything that moved.
Soon the entire platoon was letting loose at anything not tagged friendly. They had ammunition to spare; battalion logistics had doubled each panzer’s stubber ammunition load in advance of the op. It made for a cramped interior, and the platoon’s crews were all too eager to shed the mass that was blocking their extra leg room.
The undead practically exploded under the stubber fire from all four panzers, oozing a liquid that was almost black. Borysenko crabbed a few pictures with his sights for the after-action debrief, but ultimately ignored the sight; the black magic parading as science behind gene-war agents was way beyond what his secondary education biology classes had taught him.
‘Who knows, maybe the mitochondria is still the powerhouse of their cells.’
He glanced behind Sapper-3, seeing scores of armored vehicles and panzers following after his own at a steady pace. Staring back forward, he saw the large cobblestone road continued for more than a kilometer alongside the garden, finally ending in a big block of buildings they’d have to go around; the city market.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
As he fired another burst at a crawler, he knew that these few crunchies were only the beginning.
Thankfully, his panzer’s magazine was full of canister shot and siege rounds. Command wanted the bridge intact, but he had carte blanche to demolish everything else between him and—
CRUNCH
“AHA!” Hans shouted with glee. “El-tee, you hear that? We got the first crunch!”
Borysenko smiled. “Good. Our treads needed the lubricant.”
—
Another dull boom reached Nick’s ears through the Lynx’s hull.
“Looks like they’re really going ham on those Zs, huh?” the gunner muttered.
“Everything looks like a nail to a hammer.” He said. “Hold your fire for when it will matter; there will be plenty of time to put bullets into skulls on the way back.”
The gunner grumbled but said nothing more, though Nick spotted him looking around with the RWS’s sensors for targets. It wasn’t particularly hard when the undead heat signatures were doing nothing to conceal themselves and everything to follow after the noise…for a few meters.
Porbably something to do with the specific genewar variant, though it could very well be the scouts’ Lynx armored personel carrier.
Their old Panther IFVs —a holdover from the regiment’s founding from the remnants of an old army regiment— had been big, heavy and noisy. They were meant to excel in recon-by-fire roles, probing the enemy for information and weaknesses, but the focused too much on protection and too little on mobility, the crux of a scout’s strength.
Lynxes were the younger, lighter, faster siblings of the Panther, designed and built entirely in-house using years of experience by frontline troops and with the full knowledge of what the regiment’s scouts needed.
They were shorter, at just six wheels instead of eight, which meant the dismounts were reduced from eight to four. Platoon organization shifted to accomodate the change, four vehicles becoming six. A platoon’s size was reduced from four squads to three, with the ‘savings’ used to make a new platoon per company.
The interior was cramped and the AC was a little hotter, but they made the unit stronger, adding two more heavy stubbers per platoon and three more pairs of eyes looking out for danger instead of staring at the floor inside the troop compartment.
Smaller, better designed engines allowed for greater fuel efficiency, less noise and a more insulated thermal signature as well. More than once, entire platoons had flanked enemies without them realizing until the critical moment.
Everything was relative, of course; you wouldn’t call a fifteen-ton infantry combat vehicle gunning down a cobblestone road whisper-quiet. The undead certainly didn’t; the platoon was attracting lots of attention, though its speed made the Zs quickly lose their ‘lock’ and go back to whatever they were doing before.
Strange…but good. Nobody wanted a horde of undead chasing them down at crawling speed while they made a circuit of the area that had been branded as the southern district.
It was just south-west of the garden, and likely comprised much of the working class housing of the city. It was larger than the garden, the central district and the palace district combined, made up of several hundred if not thousands of buildings going two to four stories high.
These were medieval apartment buildings, though they hardly looked like the apartment buildings that many of the regiment’s troopers had grown up in. There wasn’t a hint of concrete or prefabed steel to be found in the entire place; the better-off buildings closest to the larger roads were made of brick and mortar, while the inner buildings were almost entirely out of wood.
Nothing like the northern slums beyond the river, thankfully; that area looked absolutely chaotic. Nick didn’t want to even think about clearing it out house-by-house, and his thoughts were likely shared by command. He hoped that the Colonel would torch that poor excuse of a housing district. All it would take was a single incendiary shell to turn the entire place into ash.
“Well, sir.” The gunner spoke up. “Uh…nevermind actually.”
Nick nodded, but said nothing out loud. He was more than happy to let the crisp morning air cool the parts of his face that weren’t covered by a respirator. ‘It’s a boring ride indeed, but we don’t want to jynx—‘
‘Damn it…’ He thought, wincing. “Copy, Control. You want us to go and check that out?”
“Looks like we’ve got a hit.” Nick spoke up, hearing rustling in the troop compartment under his hatch.
Had any normal infantry platoon spread out like his, splitting into two trios to cover double the ground, the commander would’ve felt like herding cats while trying to coordinate their movements. Poor 1st and 2nd Infantry got the bottom of the barrel, but the Cav Scouts received the best of the best…or at least the craziest. They were all eager to put a few rounds on target.
He switched to the platoon comms, consulting the tablet holstered on the side of his plate carrier.
“All elements, this is Hitman-2-5. We’ve got a point-of-interest less than a klick east; zombies are pooling around something, and command wants to know what that is. Check your firearms and ready up for combat; today’s menu is full of zombie guts.”
…
Taking a left, the three vehicles of Alpha Section found themselves on a rather unassuming street crawling with the undead. Green’s Bravos were still a minute out.
“I see ‘em. Stars, that’s a lot of targets.” The gunner noted with glee.
Nick grunted in agreement. Overlord had caught the gathering pretty early on, but there were a lot of zombies approaching the brick-and-mortar apartment building from around the neighbourhood. Lots were walking, some were crawling, and some had arrows sticking—
‘Wait, arrows?’
He spotted something fly down from the building’s top floor. The arrow hit a zombie in the chest, barely stunning it. His eyes widened in realization. He took a deep breath.
Calm and steady gets the jerky…
“All elements, looks we’ve got survivors on the top floor. Dismount and secure the entrance.”
At his command every vehicle halted, hydraulics hissing as their rear ramps dropped to the cobbled road to release the infantry.
“Go, go, go!” The staff sergeant of 1st squad shouted, her soldiers filing out on either side of their with their rifles pointed froward. “You, you, rear guard. This party’s private.”
TUTUTUTUTU
Tracer fire erupted from the vehicles’ heavy stubbers, lighting up the horde. The troopers weren’t a second late, dozens of rifles joining the fight.
The undead were quick to switch their attention to the biggest noise maker, more than a hundred of them turning around to attack the platoon’s dismounts. A futile attempt; slow and unarmored, they were no match for the trained cav scouts.
Engines purred behind them, and soon three more lynxes arrived, troopers dismounting as they advanced. With Greene there to take control of the vehicles, Nick went up to the dismounts of the next Lynx over, finding the squad commander laying down lead downrange. The staff sergeant noticed him almost immediately.
“What?” She asked over the gunfire.
He pointed at the building’s top floor. “Get your squad and follow tme, we’ve got VIPs in the building.”
The sergeant nodded,shouting orders to her troopers. There was nothing more to say; the impromptu CQB team moved left behind the vehicles before approaching the building’s entrance from the side. The rest of the platoon swifted its fire to cover them, though the zombies were little threat.
‘For us, at least. Poor bastards have bows and arrows; they’d be fucked against this many Zs.’ Nick thought as he picked a tubular grenade from his plate carrier and pulled the pin.
“Flash in the hole!” He shouted, tossing it through a window, raising his rifle and blindly firing inside.
The rest of the troopers crouched down and looked away from the windows, though their counterflash goggles and ear protection did most of the work.
BANG
“Breach, breach, breach!” The sergeant shouted, slapping the pointman’s shoulder.
The troopers filed into the room, splashing any intact head inside the building. The bottom floor was devoid of anything bar a few dusty tables, but there were more zombies coming from upstairs.
Some of the troopers reloaded while others slowed down as they reached the bottom of their magazines. The bloodied stone floor filled with polymer cases and dumped magazines.
Rushing up and through dying and dead zombies with fresh mags and blazing barrels, the squad cleared two rooms that were devoid of the living.
Then, they heard shouts from the floor above. The language was strange, unknown yet somewhat familiar. That only strengthened their resolve, even as fresh mags ran dry and many of the troopers resorted to their sidearms.
Five, ten, twenty more shots and the last flight of stairs was filled with gore but clear of undead threats. Sploshes of black blood coated Nick’s combat respirator, and he muttered a silent thanks to whoever had made the glass fog-proof.
Silence reigned for several moments as they climbed up the room. Nick was barely able to see the pointman as he entered through the doorway with his gun pointed to the floor, stepping over a broken door and a zombie corpse.
The trooper spoke. “We’re here to hel—“”
“Ahhhh!” A girl shrieked.
Next thing Nick knew, the pointman had a crossbow bolt sticking out of his plate carrier.