Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV by J.W. Vohs Read Free Book Online

Jack and Carter had finished inflating the first raft and moved on to the second, at which point David and Marcus switched from perimeter security to loading gear and supplies into the boat that was ready to go. As they began the work, they heard Bobby open fire with his M-4 again, but Luke’s silence indicated that he was sticking with his medieval weapons. That meant that the flesh-eaters were close, and added even more urgency to the work being done on the watercraft.
    Luke was thankful that Bobby had thinned out the pack heading his way from the east before turning to face the group closing in on their western flank. Now Luke only faced seven hunters instead of ten. Any other human still living in the world would have been offering up final prayers as the frenzied pack rushed to within twenty meters of their prey, but the teen warrior calmly released an arrow which he watched fly through the open mouth and spinal column of a roaring monster even as another shaft was being nocked. Luke was surprised to see the next arrow smack into the face of a large hunter without passing through, but the broad-head had obviously reached the brain because the monster collapsed in a heap a mere ten meters from the archer’s feet.
    The young but extremely experienced fighter seamlessly switched weapons, dropping the bow while pulling his trench axe in one fluid movement. With no time to swing, Luke dropped his shoulder and flipped the first hunter to reach him head over heels. He then used a vicious uppercut with the blade-side of the axe to lop off the top of the second flesh-eater’s head while side-stepping an attempted tackle by the third member of the pack to reach his position. With two hunters still alive behind him, Luke flipped the trench-axe into a two-handed grip and deftly slid the pointed tip into the path of the fourth beast, the creature’s forward momentum causing it to be impaled right between its black, furious eyes.
    Luke knew he didn’t have time to yank the weapon free, choosing instead to pull his combat knife as he ducked the grab of the f inal hunter in the group. As the flesh-eater stumbled past his vanishing quarry, the teen stabbed the monster in the back of the head with the Gerber dagger,  losing his grip on the weapon when it became stuck in the skull of the falling creature. Luke didn’t like to rely on his guns, mostly because he didn’t practice with them much and he was such a natural with his bow. But with no other choice, he pulled his silenced .22 to deal with the remaining two hunters who’d regained their footing and were now snarling in frustration and hunger as they rushed him. The young warrior calmly allowed the first monster to bury its teeth in his forearm, confident that the Kevlar-reinforced leather would prevent anything more than a bruise from the bite as he shot the second hunter through the face. Then he stuck the barrel of the pistol in the eye of the beast tearing at his arm and scrambled its brains with a final pull of the trigger.
    More howls were echoing around the team as Luke retrieved his weapons after making sure that Bobby was all right. He needn’t have worried about the former Ranger who’d only missed twice with his AR as he’d dropped eight hunters beyond pistol range. Luke briefly considered the fact that he and two other members of his team had just killed almost thirty hunters in less than five minutes, knowing it hadn’t been easy, but still having trouble remembering when it had been difficult. He knew that fighters armored according to Jack’s specifications had been killed by the hunters, and not just a few. But in general, those who were slain had been buried beneath a mob of flesh-eaters who’d managed to find an unprotected patch of skin with their teeth before a rescue was possible. Some soldiers, including Carter, had actually survived such mobbings and lived to tell about them. The probability that North American humans had been over ninety percent