The Gristle & Bone Series (Book 1): The Flayed & The Dying

by Roach, Aaron

  “Form a circle,” Whitney said in a low tone. Then far louder, “FORM A CIRCLE!”

  The sound of boots moving on asphalt followed the orders, as Whitney’s men moved to obey. Whitney raised his rifle to his shoulder and aimed down the sight at the corpse nearest to him – a groaning priest. The priest’s clerical collar was splattered with red and his dark robes were torn at one of the sleeves, exposing a deep gash on the holy man’s wrist. His face and body were unmoving, but his eyes were hungry as they glared across the distance at him.

  Then, without warning, the soldiers’ attention was suddenly pulled upwards at the sound of shattering glass. They pointed their rifles up in time to see the windows of the surrounding buildings explode outward, sending glass raining down on them. Some of the men looked away, shielding their faces from the falling shards; but most, like Whitney, looked on horrified as hundreds of screeching skeletals spilled out from the burst windows and began crawling down the sides of the buildings like spiders.

  The primary infected.

  Kill on sight.

  “Open fire!”

  The skeletals shrieked as the wall of lead slammed into them. Whitney moved automatically, lining his sight on a skull, pulling the trigger, emptying the magazine, reloading, lining up on the next skull and pulling the trigger again.

  Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

  The skeletals landed on the street and charged, slamming into his small company of men like a train. The first soldier to go down was yanked to the ground in a frenzy of stabbing, biting limbs. Whitney fired on, gritting his teeth angrily as he realized that gunfire was not damaging the monsters fast enough. He readjusted his aim and put a bullet in the dying soldier’s skull as an act of mercy.

  He swung the barrel of his rifle to his left in time to see the priest lurching at him. With less than an inch to spare between the priest’s face and the end of his rifle, Whitney pulled the trigger and caved the holy man’s forehead in. Another corpse lunged for him, then another. Boston’s dead were now definitely animated, and they were joining the skeletals in the massacre of his men.

  “Pull back! Everybody, pull back!” Whitney shouted, and what was left of his men began a controlled retreat.

  Rat-tat-tat.

  Rat-tat-tat.

  Rat-tat-tat.

  The dead shuffled after them, arms outreached and grasping while Whitney’s men continued to shoot them down. For each one that was felled by the soldiers, however, a dozen more seemed to take its place. Whitney realized with a falling heart that there was not enough ammunition in the world to stop the corpses that were eating their way through them.

  “Pull back!” Whitney shouted again, but their march had brought them deep into the forest of standing bodies and now that the forest was awake, there was nowhere to hide.

  Whitney saw one of his men yanked to the ground by a trio of skeletals, and another bitten in the leg by a little dead girl. As the toddler gnawed on his thigh, the soldier whipped his rifle around and unloaded into the top of her cranium. With her dispatched, the soldier tried to limp away. He had made only a few yards when he was swarmed by more of the dead. Whitney saw a corporal, a boy of only nineteen years, calling out for his mother as a skeletal pulled guts from his belly. Even as Whitney looked on, another skeletal leapt from a nearby roof to land on the boy’s head, crushing it and silencing his whimpers forever.

  The wall of soldiers that surrounded Whitney was beginning to thin, but he urged his men to continue firing as they backstepped. “Load and kill, load and kill!” he roared, and to his soldiers’ credit, they did, shooting and reloading their weapons desperately in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

  In his last moments, when there were only a handful of his men left, a history lesson from Whitney’s childhood school days came to mind. The fate of the ancient Roman legions who marched deep into the Teutoburg Forest, only to be wiped out by the Germanic tribes that waited there in ambush. When all was lost, the leader of the Romans, General Varus, fell on his own sword to avoid being captured by the enemy.

  Whitney raised the barrel of his rifle to his chin and closed his eyes, but at the last, didn’t pull the trigger. Too easy, he chuckled to himself, before unloading into the mob collapsing into him. His last sight was that of reaching fingers and snapping teeth, and then all was black.

  -43-

  On the rooftop, Ward and Litz had just shoved Don onto the helicopter when the sounds of gunfire erupted over the noise of the rotating blades.

  The duo turned and ran to the roof’s edge to witness the massacre of Whitney and their unit below.

  “You motherfuckers!” Litz roared, bringing his rifle around and unloading it into the swarming bodies on the street.

  Ward, standing next to his companion, watched in horrified awe as a skeletal, mid-feasting, slowly turned its skull a hundred-and-eighty degrees to stare up at them through dark, pitted eye sockets.

  It was the first time either of them had seen a primary infected and, as they watched, the thing opened its mouth and screamed the scream of a man falling out of a high-rise. At the sound, almost as one, all the dead faces below turned to meet the terrified faces of the two soldiers staring down at them from the roof.

  At the sight of the humans, the dead swarmed.

  Litz fired his weapon into the shrieking, groaning mass. The skeletals broke ahead of the group and began climbing the face of the building with their spiked appendages. The walking corpses, incapable of climbing in such a way, spilled into the building’s entrance below.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, Litz!” Ward shouted, yanking his still-firing friend backwards by the shoulder.

  Litz moved to shrug the man’s hand off, to continue his one-man campaign against the dead, but thought better of it as soon as the first skeletal appeared, crawling over the lip of the roof like some demented leper.

  Both men turned to run back to the waiting helo, where a female passenger waved frantically and shouted for them to hurry. As Ward ran, he sensed the skeletals close behind, literally snapping at their heels. When they neared the aircraft, Ward and Litz threw themselves into the open doorway, spinning midair to land with their backs on the floor, rifles trained outward and ready to fire at the dead faces they expected to see there.

  But all they saw was tilted earth as the helicopter took to the sky.

  The two soldiers scrambled into a sitting position and peered down through the open door; they were only a dozen feet from the rooftop and rising, but certainly still close enough for the skeletals to make a leaping grab for them. However, the creatures had stopped their attack and were simply standing in a perfect circle around where the helicopter had just been, staring as it continued its ascent.

  “What the fuck are they looking at? Why’d they stop?” Litz demanded of no one in particular.

  Ward, just as bewildered, could only shake his head unknowingly. He moved to stand when he saw a hand being offered to him. He looked up to see the woman who had waved them in.

  “That was a close one,” she said, helping him up from the floor. “Here, take a seat next to Soph,” she said, gesturing at an empty seat next to a young girl.

  Ward glanced at the child, who ignored him. Instead, she was staring intently at the man Ward and Litz had rescued from the building, strapping himself into the seat across from her.

  “I know you,” Sophia said to the man.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know you,” she repeated. “You work with my dad at the museum.”

  Don stiffened, unsure of what to say. What were the chances?

  “You left us,” the girl continued. “When everything started happening, you ran away, and you left us.”

  Don stammered, all the confidence he had gained over the past two days, dissipating, “I…uh…I don’t know you. I think…you may have mistaken me for someone else.”

  “No, I haven’t made a mistake. Your name is Mr. Truant. Don, I think. I was in your tour. And when ev
eryone started hurting themselves, you ran away. You ran and you left us,” she repeated.

  “So what?” Don snapped suddenly. “Lots of people ran! You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t fucking run too!”

  “Hey!” Kat interjected angrily. “She’s just a kid, watch how you speak to her!” Then, to Sophia, “Drop it Soph, he’s not worth it.”

  Don felt rage building. How dare they? The child’s accusation of cowardice, and now this other one’s dismissive tone of him. Him! It rankled.

  Don thought of Delilah and the dead girl in the apartment, and then he envisioned these two in their places. At the thought, the rage became coals, warm and comforting.

  Across from Don, the younger girl mumbled, “I’m just saying, my dad wouldn’t have run.”

  Don smirked at her and spoke just loud enough to be heard above the engine, “I saw your dad, girl. He was a beast when I saw him last, just like those things down there. A monster. If you ask me, he should’ve run too.”

  Don looked up in time to see Kat’s fist slam into his face.

  Litz was on Kat in a second, pinning her hands behind her back, while the man in the business suit reached over and prevented a spitting and cursing Don from launching himself from his seat. Ward placed himself between the pair, raising his hands. “Hey!” he shouted over the noise. “Everybody needs to calm the fuck down, now!” He pointed at Don still struggling in the businessman’s hands, “Shut it!”

  Don snarled but obeyed.

  Ward rounded on Kat, “I saw two people shoved out of this bird before it touched down to get us.”

  Kat opened her mouth to explain, but Ward held up a silencing hand “And to be honest? I don’t give a shit who they were or what happened that caused you fine people to push them out! But if you strike my passenger, or any other of these passengers again, you’ll be taking the leap too. Is that understood?”

  Kat glared at him before taking her seat without saying anything. She fumbled with her seatbelt and strapped herself back in.

  “Good,” Ward continued. “Now, it is obvious we have all had a very trying fucking day, so I’m going to insist that everybody shut their mouths for the rest of the time we are in the air. Understood?”

  One by one, the passengers nodded, with the older girl squinting angrily at him before acquiescing. Even Litz nodded, smiling at his normally soft-spoken companion.

  “Way to take control, man,” Litz said.

  “Shut it, Litz,” Ward responded exasperatedly before collapsing into a seat by the younger girl. He closed his eyes, tried to regain his composure, then gazed out the window.

  From the sky, the passengers received a bird’s-eye view of the massacre unfolding on the streets below. Thousands of Federation soldiers across the city were embroiled in battles they could not win; Command’s bid to retake the city failing before their very eyes. They saw soldiers break and run, leaving their friends and comrades behind to fight in small pockets, and they saw desperate last stands as soldiers fought on until they exhausted their ammunition and were eaten alive by the dead. As they flew over the city’s famous ballpark, three more helicopters took to the sky and joined them, abandoning a large company of soldiers on the baseball diamond as the dead swarmed down from the stands.

  Eventually, the passengers chose to look away from the devastation, all except for Don who kept a curious eye on the chaos below.

  -44-

  When the tape of Thaniel’s conversation with Neyra clicked to silence, the air in the room hung heavy for a few moments before Harig spoke from across the table, “Is that it?”

  Thaniel nodded, “That’s it. Like I said, it was just a phone call. I’d never spoken to the man before that.”

  Harig ran a hand through his thinning hair and Sharpe leaned back in his seat, his face pensive. Unsure, Thaniel continued, “I told you guys, my friends had nothing to do with this, I had –”

  Harig exhaled in frustration and finished the sentence for him, “Nothing to do with this. Understood. You have – nothing; no new information to offer.”

  Thaniel paused, “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Harig rapped his knuckles on the table before addressing him again, curtly, “Mr. Briends, thank you for your cooperation in this matter. I’m sure you and your friends are hungry after your ordeal. Chief,” he turned to Hyres, “if you would be so kind as to liberate the Briends party from the brig and escort them to the mess decks?”

  Next to Thaniel, Hyres rose from his seat. Thaniel rose more hesitantly. He had expected more of an argument and was bewildered by the brief conversation and his quick dismissal. “So, I’m free to go?”

  Harig, who had turned to speak to Sharpe, looked up at him, “Go? Where would you go, Mr. Briends?”

  Thaniel didn’t have an answer as he was led from the room.

  When the two officers were left alone, the captain muttered a curse and Sharpe nodded in agreement.

  Briends had been a dead end.

  “So Briends didn’t pan out,” said Sharpe. “What about Neyra’s facility? Surely, there must be useful intel there.”

  “Aye,” answered Harig, “Team 6 is already on the way. They should have boots on the ground within an hour. Hopefully they find…something.”

  “Good, then it’s not over yet. So, what’s the problem?” Sharpe asked, raising an eyebrow at the defeated expression on the captain’s face. It was unbecoming of the man.

  Harig sighed before catching Sharpe watching him. He regained his composure, all professional, before speaking again. “It’s Boston…our advance has been halted, Sharpe. Just before you touched down with Briends and party in tow, reports of a large-scale ambush started coming in over the radio, from soldiers and corpsmen throughout the city.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Seven minutes, Sharpe. Seven minutes of static, screaming and gunfire before everything went quiet. Everything.” He paused, “From what some of the rescue choppers have reported seeing…there’s no one left. Hell, even the flood of dead things is receding again, disappearing into buildings and subway tunnels. Where our soldiers were…there’s naught but empty streets now.”

  Sharpe stared at the man and tried not to balk. When he and his team had departed the Defiant that morning on their mission to retrieve Briends, they had flown over thousands of troops pushing into the city. That they were now all dead, killed within the span of seven minutes, no less – it was almost unthinkable.

  “You saw them, Sharpe?” Harig asked, his voice cutting through the shock. “The skeletals and the walking corpses?”

  “Not the secondary infected. Not up close, at least,” Sharpe answered. “We encountered the skeletals and that was enough.” The sudden image of a grinning skull flashed in his mind and he shook it away. “Whatever happened to those people, sir…it’s as bad as they say it is. Worse. Still, when it came to a firefight, we got them in the end.”

  Harig dipped his head in approval. “You’re the only ones who did, Sharpe, and that, at least, is worthy of celebration.” He stood up and walked to a cabinet on the other side of the room. He pulled out a decanter of amber liquid and two glass tumblers. “What were the names of your men again, the ones who didn’t make it?”

  “Grimaldi, Merrill, and Salim. Good men, all of them.”

  “Well this is Glencallan 25,” he said, pouring it into the glasses. “Good scotch for good men.” He handed Sharpe the glass and clinked it with his own. “To Grimaldi, Merrill, and Salim.”

  Sharpe repeated the names and took a swallow. Harig granted him a moment to enjoy the whisky and reflect on his fallen teammates before speaking, kindly, “You look like shit, Sharpe. Go get some rest.”

  Sharpe rose at the dismissal but turned to ask the captain a question.

  “What’s going to happen with Briends?”

  Harig shrugged and didn’t meet his eyes. “Briends doesn’t know much, but he knows enough. He was a dead man the moment Neyra called him; his friends were dead the minute he let them listen to that tape.�
�� He finished with a guilty sigh, “It’s being handled, Sharpe.”

  Sharpe nodded. It made sense. Briends and his friends knew of Command’s involvement with Neyra, and that made them a liability. When the hammer of blame inevitably fell, of course Command would not want Briends alive to direct the hammer to their nail.

  “Understood, Captain, I’ll be resting if you need me.”

  As he walked out of the room, Sharpe tried to keep his guilt from wandering to Briends. It was a poor fate for an innocent man, but it was a better fate than many others had suffered that day.

  In the ship’s morgue, several decks below, the body bags of Sharpe’s dead operators began to move.

  -45-

  As the helicopter left Boston in its wake, Kat gazed through the window back towards the clouds amassing behind its skyline like a gathering army. The dark billows rolled in over the distant ships in the harbor, then over land until the city was consumed by rain and mist. The weather brought with it the paralyzing fear she felt in the pavilion the day before, and goosebumps rose on her skin.

  A warning.

  Kat sent up a quick prayer, thankful they were leaving the city and inclement weather behind.

  As they moved away from Boston’s higher population areas, the gruesome scenes below changed into a different kind of bedlam in the surrounding suburbs and townships. They saw the slow stampede of dead things eating their way through traffic and the lines of refugees that snaked their way out of the city. Trains of vehicles, soldiers, and supplies moved from the opposite direction towards danger, while all around them there were the unmistakable flashes of gunfire.

  The towns grew sparser until the terrain eventually opened into vast pastures and woodlands, and Sue called back from the cockpit that they would be landing shortly. True to her word, their flight brought them over a massive field with soldiers and civilians bustling over the grass like ants on a discarded meal. The area covered more than a dozen acres, spread out over commandeered farmland and surrounded by forest. At the edge of the woods, soldiers were mounting spotlights on the twenty-foot-tall chain-link fences that enclosed the open expanse. Within the boundaries of the camp, mobile homes and shipping containers were being dropped off and moved about, with long lines of people waiting outside already established structures. Even as they watched, several aircraft on the ground were unloading their human cargo. As the copters took to the sky again, the unloaded passengers were split up to stand in differing queues.