The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3)

by Luke Duffy

  Al remained pinned behind the wall that was slowly disintegrating around him. The bullets punched heavily into the brick work, sending out splinters of high-speed masonry in all directions, steadily chopping away at his only cover. He pushed his body down, screaming silently as the streets boomed with the roar of machinegun and rifle fire. From his position below the terrifying lightshow that whipped through the street, he could see Tina and Tommy squirming in their shallow holes, writhing as the tracer continued to zip through the air all around them. He could not tell if either of them had been hit, and communication with them was out of the question due to the thunderous crescendo. Either way, it did not matter. They needed to get out of there before the enemy gunners adjusted their fire.

  The flare suddenly died, and once again the streets were cast into darkness, momentarily lit by the flashes of ball and tracer rounds as they slammed into hard objects. The gunfire continued, but its intensity faltered for a few short seconds as the attacking gunners lost sight of their aiming marks. Al saw his opportunity and seized the moment. Working on instinct, he sprang from cover and leapt to the side as the burning tracers continued to race along the street, whipping past just centimetres from his huge frame, and snapping close to his head.

  “Moving,” he screamed, informing the others that he was breaking cover.

  Raising his rifle as he bounded away from the crumbling wall, he loosed off a hail of fire into the general direction of the enemy. His weapon juddered in his hands as the muzzle flash burst from the tip of his barrel like a series of lightning bolts. His fire was inaccurate, sailing through the air with no real aiming point, but that did not matter. All he wanted was to cause their attackers to flinch behind their guns, giving Al and the rest of his patrol the precious few seconds they needed to get out of the killing zone.

  The enemy fire wavered, and for a short moment their bullets sailed high and away from Tommy and Tina. Al fired his rifle again, aiming at the multitude of muzzle flashes he could see from various points at the end of the street. His rapid fire caused the weapon to jerk violently in his hands, spraying his rounds over a wide arc as they smashed into buildings and glided harmlessly over rooftops.

  “Move, move now,” he screamed across to Tommy and Tina. “Rally on me, rally right. Fucking move.”

  Tommy was the first to react, leaping from the shallow depression he had been lying in and bounding towards where Al waited in the cover of the nearest building. He stopped in his tracks, realising that Tina had not moved and remained in the shallow dip behind him. He turned and lunged into the hole, grabbing her by the collar.

  Again, the enemy guns opened up with the same ferocity as before, having recovered from their moment of shock when Al’s rounds had headed towards them. Their fire was still not as accurate as it had been, but that would soon change as Tommy became aware of another sizzling flare that was racing up into the black sky. It was only a matter of seconds before it exploded with its dazzling light and exposed them as they stood in the open.

  “Tina, move,” Tommy screamed down at her, yanking her to her feet and dragging her along behind him. “Come on, we’re bugging out.”

  Tina’s legs refused to cooperate. She knew what she needed to do, but no matter how hard she tried, there was a part of her brain that would not comply. It was as though her mind had left her body. She could see herself being dragged along as tracers streaked between them and thumped into the ground at their feet. She could see Al, blasting away with his rifle on full automatic, hollering at them to get into cover behind him. Yet no matter how loudly she screamed at herself from within her skull, her empty body stumbled along in a daze, seized with terror and being hauled to safety by Tommy.

  She was suddenly shoved forward, catapulted through the air and into cover by Tommy as he leapt across towards where Al was standing. As Tina landed, feeling her body crash into something hard and then collapsing into a painful heap, she became aware of the second flare bursting to life like an exploding star.

  Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack… Another stream of deadly fire rained in towards them from along the street.

  A cry rang out from somewhere close by. Tina looked up in time to see Tommy spin, his left arm flailing out to his side, and his body crumpling to the ground. More glowing red bullets zipped into the spot where Tommy had fallen, slamming into the earth and sending up splinters of smashed brick and tarmac. The noise was deafening as the cracks and thumps of the speeding rounds hammered away at the air, leaving all attempts at communication utterly useless.

  Al was still firing while Tommy squirmed close by at his feet, trying to pull himself to safety before the enemy fire found its mark and chewed him up. Tina stared at him, unable to make sense of anything that was happening around her. She could see them all and hear their shouts, screams, and the barking gunfire, but none of it seemed real.

  Suddenly, returning to her like a howling wind, her mind was released from the grip of stunned inactivity. Without thinking, she sprang forward, ignoring the burst of machinegun bullets that hissed and snapped by her head. She reached down and grabbed hold of Tommy by his wrists and hauled him towards her, pushing down hard with her legs until she fell back into the cover of the building. Tommy landed on top of her as a flood of snapping projectiles ripped into the patch of ground where he had been sprawled just seconds beforehand.

  Al pulled himself back into cover, tearing the empty magazine from his rifle, and reaching for another. The air around them still roared with gunfire, but they were out of immediate danger for now. The building that they hid behind absorbed the salvos, but it would not hold back the rounds for long. Eventually, under a prolonged assault, the brickwork would weaken and the bullets would smash their way through the multiple layers of walls within the structure. He had seen it demonstrated on many occasions. He had even witnessed huge trees with trunks that were two metres thick being felled by sustained fire from a machinegun.

  Tommy was howling with pain. He writhed on the floor, holding his hand against his smashed shoulder where a round had punched through, shattering his collar bone, and tearing the flesh. Already, he was soaked with blood and losing more by the second.

  Tina, crouching beside Tommy and tearing at the wrapper of his field dressing, became aware of other distant sounds. She realised that she could hear more noises of battle coming from the north. The distinct echoing rattle of automatic fire and the low concussions of high-explosives that caused the ground to shudder were clearly audible. She knew what those distant sounds meant. Their base was also under heavy attack.

  “Al,” she shouted, “the base…”

  Al paused and looked towards the north, trying to focus his hearing as another volley of machinegun bullets hammered away at the walls behind them. He heard the raging battle in the distance, and his facial expression quickly turned from anger to confusion.

  “Harry, send sit-rep, over,” he demanded through his radio, but there was no answer. “Harry, Al, radio check. Send sit-rep, over.”

  Their personal radios only had a basic planning range of one-point-five kilometres and even less in a built-up area where tall structures could interfere with the signal. In a direct line, they were roughly nine-hundred metres from the outer walls of the FOB, but in their current situation, it could very well have been nine-hundred miles. The base was not answering their calls, and the patrol was completely cut off and pinned down.

  “Harry, this is Al; we’re in heavy contact approximately one kilometre south-west of your location. Send sit-rep, over.”

  He waited, but there was still no reply. Either the base was in the process of falling to their unknown enemy, or they were too busy defending the walls. The sky towards the north flashed and blazed as the battle raged. Tracer rounds sailed through the air across the horizon like distant laser beams, travelling in all directions as the attackers and defenders fought for control of the Forward Operating Base.

  “Phil, you see much from where you are? I’ve lo
st comms with zero. They’re under attack,” Al anxiously called into his radio and turned to look in the general direction of Phil’s position. “We’re pinned down behind the building with the beer poster on the gable end, fifty metres to your half-right.”

  “Roger that, Al, I have you visual,” Phil replied calmly, his voice sounding clear and almost robotic. “No comms with base. You have dead ground to your right and buildings to the south for cover. Stay low and make your way back to the FRV.”

  Moving in a crouch and flinching against the cracks of whizzing bullets and bone crunching explosions, the three of them began to snake their way towards Phil’s location. They could not see him, but they all knew that he was busily taking out targets from his hiding place, aiming carefully at anything he saw moving from amongst the enemy positions. No doubt he had already killed a score of their attackers as they sat hunched behind their blazing guns and silhouetting themselves as he took careful aim at their heads.

  Tommy was in severe pain and losing a lot of blood. The field dressing that had been hastily placed over his wound was soaked through and bright red as the hole in his flesh continued to gush. However, he refused to release his grip on his rifle. The weapon would not leave his grasp until he finally died. Tina helped him to move, but he was becoming weaker by the second, stumbling along as she supported him with his arm flung across her shoulder. She hoped that they would find a place where they could stop for a few vital minutes, giving them the time to stem the bleeding and redress the wound before he bled out.

  A roar above them made them duck into cover as a streak of light screeched over their heads just a metre or two above them. They felt the heat of the projectile as it soared through the air, leaving a faint white trail of smoke in its wake, and accompanied with a string of tracer bullets that snapped loudly as they passed over. With a shuddering thud, the rocket slammed into a building just twenty metres ahead of them. It detonated with a blinding flash, sending sparks racing outwards in all directions, and quickly followed by a shockwave that pushed against the bodies of Al and the others as they were still dropping to the floor, searching for cover. Shrapnel smashed into the buildings all around the centre of the explosion, shattering windows, brickwork, and bone as it ploughed through the corpses still mindlessly wandering through the battle-zone.

  The pressure of the explosion pushed against Tina’s skull like a vice. She screamed with pain and fear and shock as the world around her juddered, and the hard ground slammed into her body. Her vision danced and blurred, and she felt herself tumbling into blackness as her consciousness began to slip from her.

  Al sprinted forward a bound as a cloud of dust and smoke spilled out from the building where Phil had been positioned. The walls, already severely damaged, had collapsed inwards, and the roof had fallen in through the floors. The moment he saw the damage, he knew in his bones that nothing could have survived.

  “Phil, Al, radio check.” Just the hiss of static was all that came back to him. “Phil, Al, click twice if you can hear me.”

  He tried again and again, but there was no answer from within the wreckage of the house. Al needed to act fast. Their FRV was gone, and more than likely, Phil along with it. He turned and glanced back behind him as more tracer whizzed through the streets and crumbling buildings. He saw movement all around them. Dark shapes were converging on the area from every side, ignorant to the machinegun bullets that ripped through their bodies and chewed up the streets around them.

  “Move, Tommy,” Al screamed back at the two prostate forms that were still reeling from the rocket that had obliterated their rendezvous point. “Tina, get him up and get going. Phil is gone, we need to move.”

  Tommy was scrambling through the dust and debris, trying to climb to his feet while Tina writhed beside him from the effects of the blast that had engulfed and overwhelmed her senses just moments before. Tommy coughed and sputtered, reaching down and grabbing Tina by the arm, ignoring the pain he felt surging through his body.

  “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  The dead were closing in from all around them. Al fired into a number of bodies as he bounded through the rubble, ignoring the deluge of bullets clapping at the air and slamming into the ground. Again, his rifle ceased firing, and without a second thought, he released the magazine and instinctively slammed a fresh one into place. He stopped, crouched into a shallow fold in the ground, and turned to give covering fire for Tommy and Tina as they lumbered after him.

  More rockets were streaking across the sky, obliterating structures and vehicles alike, flinging deadly shrapnel in all directions while bullets thumped into the road surfaces and the walls of the collapsing buildings. The roar of the battle crashed against their senses. Wave after wave of bursting machinegun fire flowed towards them as the mind rattling concussions of the exploding ordnance threatened to throw them from their feet.

  Tommy and Tina spilled into the shallow depression and landed at Al’s feet. A cloud of dust and splintered rock pluming into the air around the lip of the crater marked another near miss. Luckily, their enemy’s aim was slightly out, but they were already adjusting. The next volley slammed into the ground beside Al’s head. He rolled to the side and screamed with anger as his eardrums burst and rattled violently against his reeling brain. They were pinned down again, their foe having seen them and zeroed in on their location with accurate sustained fire. He began to fire wildly, roaring back at their attackers and seemingly close to madness.

  Tina, filled with rage and screaming for vengeance, joined Al at his side and began blasting away at the machinegun positions in the distance. She was howling and snarling as the rifle jerked against her shoulder with each shot, oblivious to the glowing projectiles that battered at the earth in front of her.

  Between the explosions of his rounds, Al became distinctly aware of a rumbling noise behind them. It was growing louder with each second and constantly changing in pitch. It grinded and grated mechanically and he turned, forgetting the battle for a moment, and glared into the darkness, expecting to see a new threat approaching them from their rear.

  “Get your fucking head down,” Tommy screamed up at Al, seeing that his friend was too exposed.

  Al did not react and continued to stare, wide eyed and open mouthed at something behind them. He did not notice the rounds that were smashing into the disintegrating bricks around the brim of the small crater. He appeared to have slipped from reality, and his attention was locked upon something else.

  Tommy reached out and grabbed his friend by the straps of his assault vest, dragging him down into the hole as a stream of bullets raced through the area where he had been standing. Tommy screamed at the pain that the movement caused him as a storm of searing agony emanated from his shoulder and shot through his body. As Al tumbled into the bottom of the crater, Tommy caught a glimpse of what his friend had been so transfixed with.

  Out of the darkness emerged a huge monster headed directly for them. Its heavy tracks ground the earth beneath them, churning everything to dust and obliterating the bodies of the dead, burying them deep into the mire. Its colossal body lurched and dipped as it trundled along over the undulating surface of the smashed suburbs, the long barrel of its gun reaching far out ahead of it and pointed towards their position.

  It was one of their tanks. Its engine was growling menacingly as clouds of black smoke plumed up from the exhaust outlets behind it. A number of figures staggered into its path only to be crushed beneath its tracked wheels, smashing them into bloodied and shattered bone. Without stopping or even slowing its pace, an ear-splitting thunderclap erupted from the tank’s 120mm gun, shooting out a bolt of blinding light. Tommy turned towards the south just in time to see a sudden flash and a geyser of smoke and debris fly high into the air as a building imploded in on itself.

  The tank came to a sudden stop, rocking on its suspension while its gun remained perfectly level and still just metres away from where Al and the others were taking cover. The turre
t turned slightly, and then another deafening boom echoed out from its main armament. A second machinegun position disintegrated into a cloud of twisted metal and mangled human flesh as the high explosive squash head – HESH - round obliterated the position and the building they had been positioned upon. The coaxial mounted chain gun situated to the side of the main armament inside the turret began blazing away, covering Al and the others and giving them a chance to move towards the protection of the tank.

  Jumping to his feet while the blur of guns and the boom of explosives rocked the atmosphere, Al grabbed hold of Tina and Tommy, hauling them up over the lip of the hole and towards the armoured beast. Within just a few short seconds, they were scrambling up over the tracks and climbing onto the turret as bullets whacked against the impenetrable armoured plates, pinging and clanging loudly as they ricocheted into the air.

  There was another Whoosh and Whumph, and they were bathed in a blinding ball of light as the earth erupted beside the Challenger tank, the blast wave almost flinging them from the turret and showering them with dirt. The tank remained static and did not seem to notice the missile that fell just short of its flank. It stubbornly stood its ground and continued to hammer away at the enemy with its cannon and machineguns while the remains of Al’s patrol scurried up onto its long turret amongst a hail of bullets.