by Woods, Shane
I rushed over and looked down, and there she was. Casually looking up at me from a mere dozen feet below, dead center of the balcony. She looked up and gave me a thumbs up and toothy grin as she called something up to me that the wind took for itself.
More yelling came through my radio as gunfire began in a new direction, this time from the eastern outside gate, the smaller of the two. More pops and bangs started from downriver, near the shore where I’d sent the teens. They really were mounting a full assault. As if it hadn’t hit me before, it did now. Like a fucking bulldozer. This was it. This was our fight. Suddenly, I’d rather be anywhere else but here, and that feeling intensified as Dave clapped me on the back with his hand.
“Over the edge or I’m pushing you.” He beamed, knowing my holdup about this whole being up high thing. I hated heights.
“I’m going,” I snarled, throwing a leg over the edge and immediately feeling every muscle in my body tense up. Dave chuckled and I turned to see him grinning, nearly leering at me as I gave him a one-finger salute and lowered to my belly.
Now or never, I thought, and I dropped. And I screamed.
I felt the wind rushing past my entire being, and I fell. I fell for what felt like way longer than I should have. In fact, I knew I was falling too far. Did I miss the balcony? Was this it? Was this the last act I’d make on this Earth? Flipping the bird to my dear friend, then just flinging myself off a rooftop?
Thud
Or, maybe, just maybe, I’m a pussy and I’m being over-dramatic.
I confirmed this to be the truth as I looked up and saw my laughing wife reaching her hand down to help me to my feet.
Dave landed easily next to me, dropping to his feet just as the painted-over sliding door next to us exploded outward with a blast from inside, then followed by another small shining fountain as more painted-over glass erupted forth from the door.
My first thought, as we scrambled away from the flying glass, was that somehow we broke the balcony and it was tearing free. I quickly realized my folly as several more chunks of the material disintegrated and became airborne shrapnel, followed by a familiar voice.
“YOU FUCKERS! FUCK YOU! THIS IS MY HOUSE!” Ryan fairly shrieked as he mag-dumped his weapon blindly through the glass.
“RYAN!” I shouted back, and was met by silence. “Ryan you fuck it’s us! Friendlies!”
“Friendlies?” he stammered. “Prove it!”
I heard the sound of a fresh magazine being inserted into his weapon as he chambered a good round.
“What the fuck dude, we don’t have a password!” Jennifer chastised him.
“Don’t shoot!” I ordered as I maneuvered my head into view, through the many holes he’d made in his previous fusillade.
“Scott!” he gasped. “Oh thank fuck!”
I practically growled at his trigger-happy ass as I took my rifle loose of its sling and began to butt stroke the remaining glass out of the way. Then myself and my two comrades walked into the now open-air command center as I glared at Ryan and Rob, the pair standing now side-by-side.
“This live?” I asked, motioning to the computer screen bank nearest, the scenes of the battle below unfolding in full 1080p clarity.
“Yeah, it’s live,” Rob replied meekly. “We’re losing people.”
This statement was amplified as I watched a woman, one of our teachers, fall nearly front and center of one frame, then she received another salvo of rounds that perforated her limpening body as she lay and left streaks of high velocity spatter across the pavement and the house behind her.
I grabbed my radio as I watched the exchange in real time and pressed my earpiece nice and tight to begin issuing orders. The problem was none came. There was currently no order to give.
As oddly as it had seemed, everybody was more or less working and acting as they should have. This isn’t to say that I had a couple hundred well-oiled machine-type warriors out there, but they didn’t exactly scatter, run, and fumble like amateurs. Even as they lost ground to the enemy, it wasn’t the fearful ‘run and scream’ I’d expected to see. Even though some tripped and fell and others still got shot, they kept face-forward, firing a couple of rounds then moving back further and then firing again as they covered a friend’s retreat.
I could see it all from here, or, most of it at least.
Our teams had all appeared to fall back some. They no longer lined nice and tight around the entrances. They fell back, closer to the vehicles they had arrived in, many took positions in and around the remaining homes in the area, and while not visible to our attackers, I watched lots of smart movement.
One guy, it appeared to be Frank, would pop out from one house corner, fire a number of rounds, then disappear from sight only to pop up in a window, or another corner to fire again. We even had people firing through entire houses, lining up window to window and spraying lead at targets of opportunity.
It was encouraging to see them not just standing in the open and hosing areas down like this was a video game with infinite lives. That encouragement, however, was heavily dampened by the sight of better than a dozen scattered bodies on our side of the wall, lain casually in the street and sidewalks, a couple leaned against jersey barriers near the gate, one girl hung like a broken puppet from the upper window of a house.
Judging by the damage behind her, I’d say one way or another the entire room she was in had been exploded, leaving her limply dangling from the window frame by a single bracelet.
As I paused, glued to the monitors I watched multiple small explosives impact our security fencing at the gate. At first it was just a few here and there that shook the gating. Then one, two, and finally a third small blast rocked the gate again and our pride and joy drawbridge began a long squeak as it fell toward the Earth. When it hit home on the other side of the dry moat, it kicked up a shower of busted asphalt and dirt and ceased, likely the last movements it would ever make again.
I didn’t have time to order or think on it any further as several of our cameras flashed white and lost all focus for a moment, only to return with only half the vision they had just held.
“What the hell?” Ryan questioned as he tried several commands to clear it up. I turned and went to the windowless sliding door and peered out across the landscape.
“Flood lights, adjusting,” Rob replied calmly as he punched some commands in and brought the image halfway back to focus, but by then I had a good enough view from the balcony.
Several floodlights shone from the far side of the street from our fence, bathing the area in white and yellow luminescence. I presumed, or hoped, rather, that they were handheld but considering in several places there were two and four lights each, my stomach sank. This phase was planned.
I startled as Rob called over my shoulder to confirm what I’d already seen, but none of us could have predicted the next stage of the attack, as I’m certain it was planned to be a surprise.
A terrible rumble and a crash flooded the night sky like swamp water as another full set of lights exploded from the center of a residential block, clearly attached to another large vehicle as they gathered momentum, shredding both board and vinyl fences and even toppling a wooden swing set as it careened between houses.
“Ah fuck me,” I fairly groaned as reality sank in, and I began yelling into the radio waves for all to hear, “FALL BACK! FALL THE FUCK BACK! FUCKING RUN, PEOPLE! FALL BACK!”
I pushed my way back to the monitors to get a look at the goings-on from the closer perspective of the CCTV monitors as I continued sounding the two-syllable order to everyone with a radio to fall back.
Our people began to scatter as the flat front end of an Oshkosh Mk. 23 truck burst forth through a hedgerow between two houses like a depraved sex offender, nearly tilting over and twisting as its jockey wrenched the wheel to one side.
The lumbering beast of a military cargo truck had circumvented the blocked roads by bulldogging its way right through the neighborhood, and now it careened into t
he front of another house as it cut a left and headed in our direction. One light visible clear as day, the other headlamp still obscured by a lawn chair as it barged its way down the street.
The beast corrected its path and let out a bellow from its air horn as it gathered momentum and speared the first of two closed outer gates, rending it like peeling the foil from a Thanksgiving turkey as it raced across the dropped bridge and contacted the second fence and did much the same. The fence barely gave a tug in defiance as it departed with the horrifying vehicle, sparks being thrown in contrast to its glaring headlight as the section of dragged fence picked a grown man up in passing and slammed him headfirst into a nearby Jersey barrier, a sound I could swear I heard even from here as his skull exploded on contact with the concrete, sending viscous matter in all directions.
The truck continued on as members from our side scattered in all directions, many finding nearby vehicles and playing catch-up as they lit the vehicle up from behind with small-arms as they also were pursued.
“We got infected!” Rob spat as he zoomed the view in to the scene behind the fighting. Streaks of infected ran left and right, nipping on the heels of our own pursuers as some of them matched our own retreat inward and began spraying rounds in both directions. Bullets now flew at us, and also at the new nightmare sequence behind.
Exactly the type of scenario I didn’t want, but with all the noise we were making, what the hell did I expect?
“Not good,” I muttered, and then recognized the steady whumpwhumpwhump of rotor blades increasing in intensity, adding to the chaos at hand. “Fuck, really not good. We gotta go!”
I began gathering what I could that I thought would be useful as the cyclic rate of Ash’s M240 machine gun spun up and distant explosions rocked the night once again. I turned to the monitors to see why as Rob and Ryan followed the truck from their own electronic vantage points.
What was shown was a now-smoking rig still moving at a pretty good clip as Rich triggered IEDs alongside it, each blast peppering the rig with shotgun blasts of small supersonic shrapnel. It had nearly reached our gate as Ash’s rounds found it and began ripping through the cabin of the truck like the backside of a shooting range. It was a mess before those inside the vehicle even realized they were dead, the heavy rounds from the 240 exploding the flesh as they ripped through, painting the inside of the vehicle with all the colors of the human body.
A final concussive explosion from Rich’s devices rocked the front and wrenched the wheel, causing the truck to impact just off-center of our inner gate before the monstrous machine’s journey found an end.
The hinged-side support took the mass of the impact, and that section of fencing fell inward with a loud metallic clang and bang, leaving a gap large enough to drive another equally-sized vehicle straight through, which worked to our benefit as several of our vehicles flew through, crushing the gating further and causing it to bend as they passed. They then promptly split and scattered in different directions. I turned back to the balcony just in time to see, hear, and feel our old Little Bird friend make another pass over the building.
“Rob, Ryan, get the fuck out,” I demanded and watched as both men grabbed what they could and bolted out of the door for the command center, then I turned to my own friend and my wife, “Let’s go, we need to get out of here!”
They both began gathering whatever might be useful as we started toward the door.
The sounds of the overhead helicopter rose and fell as it clearly searched both rooftops. Pops and claps matching pings and pangs as it took gunfire from below, occasionally spinning up its side-mounted minigun and returning a burst with a whirr-brrrrrt, signaling the likely demise of yet another one of our fighting men and women.
We reached the hallway and shot straight to the end, the only other person left here being Ash and his helper, manning the platform mounted machine gun from the balcony.
“Hit the stairwell!” I told my pair. “I’m going to grab Ash and whoever and meet you at the bottom; we’re evacuating.”
I watched as the dark clouds of realization spread over Jennifer’s face first, then Dave’s.
The Compound. The North and South towers, Rich’s armory, Henry’s garage, the graves of our friends and family, all of our work.
It was lost. We’d been overrun like some rookies by little more than a ragtag group that might not even still be current military. We’d been so confident. I had been so cock sure of us.
“You’ll be right behind?” Jennifer asked, a tear forming at the corner of her eye.
“Right behind,” I assured “Dave, take point, you have the heavier gun between you. I’ll be right back, now go!”
Dave grabbed Jennifer by the wrist and got her started to the stairwell doorway as I pushed open the door to the space Ash occupied.
Jennifer gave one tearful look behind as she took her hand back from Dave and used it to balance her rifle, checking the chamber of her AR-15 and readying it at a run.
I pushed into the conference area and worked around the table to the glass door behind Ash, pulling it open and instantly regretting it as he unleashed a chest-thumping burst of hellfire at troops and shapes in the distance.
I grabbed the young teen helping him by the shoulder, nearly causing the kid to shit himself in surprise as I pointed to the doorways leading out behind me and mouthed a single word.
GO!
“Oi mate!” Ash cheered as he noticed me, then smacking the top cover of his gun, “Bugger’s peppy! I like him! Help me make him a name!”
“We’re evacuating, Ash! Let’s go!” I called as the helicopter wooshed overhead, once again changing direction and angle as it harassed people far below it with quick belches of lead.
“I’m staying, mate. If I see my cousin again today then that’s alright,” he said, nearly emotionless. “I miss her, and I owe you one.”
“Ash!” I challenged and was cut short as he flung several rounds at the tail of the hovering aircraft before pausing to check and clear a jam.
“No worry,” he calmed, “this is my story, tell it well!”
“God fucking dammit, let’s go!” I urged.
He shrugged free of my grip and picked a mangled casing from the gun’s internals.
As he worked, the helicopter attempted to zero in on its new nuisance. The machine climbed straight up and raked forward as it evaded, then it made a slow turn and began searching, the pilot locking eyes with Ash and I on the balcony as my friend slammed the 240’s top cover back down and worked the charging handle once before turning to me.
“Save yourself,” he pleaded, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “Go now, me and this guy, we have some words.”
“Fuck,” I choked as I felt my feet carrying me backwards.
The helicopter got so close I could smell the fuel it burnt being carried by the rotor wash, then everything began to happen in sequence and so much slower than it should have, yet there was no stopping it.
Ash worked the charging handle once more, ensuring that he was on a live round and everything was ready to rock.
As he moved his right hand to the trigger, the AH-6 pilot found him, the bubble cockpit sweeping right to left from our perspective as the mounted minigun began that whine, as telltale to all around as the distant shrieks of the infected rushing to join the party.
I stumbled, twisted to run, and slammed full-force into a nearby office chair as the glass and wall furthest from us began to disintegrate under a barrage of 7.62 rounds.
The bullets ripped through glass, sending it inward like a shower of tiny razor blades. They chewed at brick and pierced the far wall, traveling straight through like it never existed.
As the helicopter began to feast on my command center, sending copper and lead clean through my own apartment as well, Ash brought his weapon into service.
The M240 and the bird’s M134 arguing sprayed from balcony to sky and back and turned the world into one large cyclic vibration. As shrapnel of glass
and building materials began to fly all around me, I briefly wondered if this was to be the last thing I’d ever hear, if the bird and the building strove to drive me both deaf and mad.
I began a fast crawl across the floor as I felt bits of building material slam into me from behind, and glass carve its way up my back as I went.
The minigun continued even as the rotor noise warbled, the helicopter coughed, and the gun continuing the barrage on our floor wavered.
I chanced a glance behind me to watch the wavelength pattern of fired rounds find Ash in his balcony, piercing the pressure board fastened to the balustrade and blazing through the man’s lower half as he fell into his gun, the device kicking skyward to spray the rest of its rounds as the helicopter matched with a forward pitch. I had just cleared the corner and sprinted through debris once finding my feet and noting the cessation of rounds inbound.
A final destructive crash issued from the conference room and the entire building shook as I reached the stairwell doorway and nearly threw myself down the steps as I bounded downwards, feeling the pain in my shoulder on impact with the wall below.
I continued my rushed descent as the train wreck level commotion outside faded and changed, culminating in a series of loud smashes and crashes much lower.
I nearly ran into Shannon, Ashley, Dave, and Jennifer as I burst through the bottom door.
“Where’s Ash?” Jennifer asked.
“Nope!” I uttered between hyperventilated breath, then turned to see past Shannon and see the lower door at the end of the hallway fly off its hinges with an explosive charge. The door skidded straight up until it lost momentum and fell flat, exposing men pouring in and already firing at us as I felt the hot rounds crack past my ears and find homes wherever they struck around us, and I repeated, “NOPE!”
Dave grabbed two of the girls by the backs and practically shoved them toward the main door, caddy-corner to our location and he and I followed.
Just as I felt freedom still looming in possibility, my world was rocked again.
I was wrapped in a scorching heat from behind as an explosive device of some sort chased me with its message, picking me off my feet like an angered Valkyrie and propelling Dave and I alike through the air, and through the open front doorway.
