by D. J. Molles
“Just keep watch,” Billings said, as he scanned across the urban terrain laid out in front of him.
Sam and Jones both directed their gazes down and outwards.
Shadows, and charcoal blocks. That’s what the lightless city looked like to Sam.
After a moment, Billings made a discomfited noise, but kept he glass up to his eyes. “Too many buildings. I can barely see the streets. Let alone Alpha’s MATV.” Finally, he lowered the binoculars. “We’re never going to see them from here.”
Sam didn’t like that. “You want to move us in closer?”
Billings let out a slow breath through his nose. “That seems like a horrible idea.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, it does, Sarge.”
“Gilliard wanted us on point because he knew we weren’t going to do something stupid,” Billings reasoned, almost like he was trying to assuage his own guilt for not pressing on. “Something stupid like waltzing right back into the spot where we just lost one of our squads.”
Sam couldn’t agree more. And frankly, he felt no guilt about it. He felt that he and Billings had been reasonably circumspect, and that Alpha Squad had chosen to ignore the writing on the wall. Now Alpha Squad appeared to have paid the price for their bravado. That wasn’t Sam’s fault. He wasn’t going to take that on himself.
But then again, he was just a half-boot private.
Billings was a sergeant. He tended to take responsibility for things.
“No,” Billings finally asserted, fully lowering the binoculars. “This is dumb. We came to see if we could put eyes on. There’s no way we’re going to put eyes on from here. And I’m not committing us to going in there. We gotta call it—”
“Movement,” Jones said, his voice taut.
Sam felt sparks through his limbs. He jerked his rifle up into his shoulder pocket.
He was about to ask where, but then saw it himself.
Shit!
Straight ahead of them, no more than a quarter mile.
Right where the overpass reconnected with the city and seemed to sink into the darkness, a shape had detached from the shadows, and was moving towards them.
Sam put his cheek to his stock and sighted through his optic.
“Hold fire,” Billings rasped. Then, over the squad comms, “Guys, we got movement down at the base of the bridge, I want everyone ready to reverse the hell out of here. Standby.”
His heart now truly throttling up, Sam forced himself to dip his rifle so that he could see clearly over the top of the optic.
The shape came to a stop.
A malformed jumble of limbs.
Not just one figure, Sam realized. It was one figure, clutching another, almost like a body shield.
A high, lilting moan reached their ears.
“Oh shit,” Sam whispered. “Sarge, that’s Paige!”
Billings snapped the binos back to his eyes, but Sam saw enough, even with his unaided eye. As his focus honed in through the dimness, Sam saw the rough outline of Paige—his gear, his fatigues, the shock of bright blond hair standing out.
Arms and legs, hanging limp.
He was not moving on his own power.
He was being carried. By a primal.
Sam dropped.
The primal was directly behind Paige.
Sam knew he couldn’t take a shot that precise from a standing position.
He flattened his body out on the cool concrete, resting his rifle on its mag and sighting through his optic at the dim collection of shapes, roughly four hundred yards away from them now.
It was still going to be a tough shot.
“I think I can take him,” Sam muttered, his cheek weld muffling his words. “You want me to take him, Sarge?”
“Negative!” Billings hissed. “Just hold on!”
The two figures halted.
Another moan. Paige was definitely still alive. And immobilized. Just like Loudermouth had been.
The red dot of Sam’s optic wavered. He took a deep breath and forced himself to let it out slowly. Despite his ratcheting pulse, he forced the reticle to stop jiggling about. He saw the gray shape of the primal. He saw its head.
He needed to hold over. Put the dot over the top of the primal’s head.
The primal partially released Paige’s body, and the soldier slumped to the ground onto his knees. The primal held him erect with one hand.
But now the primal’s entire upper torso was visible.
“I can take him out,” Sam said again.
And maybe Billings was about to give him the order to do it.
But the primal reached a hand around, gripped Paige under the chin, and with one yank, ripped Paige head from his body.
Sam fired. The gunshot split the morning air, and drowned out something that Billings had shouted. Sam couldn’t tell what it was. He watched the primal jerk, even as it held Paige’s head aloft.
He fired again, and the primal jerked again.
But didn’t go down.
It threw the head at them.
It released Paige’s body, and the corpse slumped to the ground, as the detached head struck the concrete and rolled a few feet.
Sam fired again.
Struck again.
“Ryder! Let’s move!” Billings shouted.
His perception suddenly widening out of the tiny world seen through his optic, Sam became aware that Jones and Billings were beating feet for the Humvee.
The primal tilted its head back and let out a howl.
The first three rounds had struck the creature in the chest, even though Sam had held eighteen inches high.
He adjusted so the dot was a little higher. Maybe a full two feet above the primal. And squeezed one last round.
The primal’s head snapped back, and it collapsed.
But the howl didn’t end.
The howl continued on, growing louder.
Coming from a multitude of throats.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
“Ryder! Move your ass!”
Sam thrust himself off the concrete, gulping air, and he ran.
TWENTY-TWO
─▬▬▬─
THE CODE
Lee slid between trees, his feet rolling on the outsides, soft across the forest floor.
To his right, a second column snaked through the woods, about fifteen yards from him.
Just far enough that their shapes were lost in the blue cast of dawn. The quiet susurration of their boots in the leaves barely audible.
They’d left their vehicles a good ways south. The rumble of trucks could carry for a long distance, and they wanted to make sure that, if there was anybody unfriendly around the bunker, they wouldn’t see Lee and Menendez’s crew coming.
Up ahead of them, the point man held up a fist and sank to his knees.
Lee followed suit.
The comms in Lee’s ear hissed, and the point man’s voice came through as a whisper. “Captain. Sergeant. Up here.”
Lee glanced over to the right, where he saw the shadow of Menendez’s shape rise up and move up the slight incline they were positioned on. Lee slipped out of his position and followed suit, converging with Menendez at the top, where the point man was crouched.
“Whatcha got?” Menendez whispered.
The point man was one of the younger soldiers. Smallish, and lean—though everybody was lean these days. He tapped his ear and pointed further ahead through the woods. “Just heard something. Sounded like voices.”
Lee frowned, and inclined his ear in that direction. He wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard it. After years of gunbattles, many of them in tight, enclosed spaces, his hearing wasn’t what it once had been.
The point man, being as young as he was, hadn’t had the time to destroy his eardrums to the extent that Lee had. His hearing was still sharp.
Squatting on his haunches at the top of the small ridge, Lee thought he heard what the point man had detected. A low mumble of voices, carrying through the woods.
Menendez looked to Lee. “We’re within several hundred yards of the bunker.”
Lee nodded. “Someone’s outside of it.”
Another voice reached them, and this time it was all too clear.
The words were not audible, but it was definitely a raised voice. Some urgency to it.
Lee shifted his weight. “Keep rolling,” he said. “But we don’t know who that is, so take us in nice and slow. Let’s keep the element of surprise.”
The point man nodded once, then rose up from his knees and crept off through the woods.
Menendez and Lee waited until he’d got about twenty yards ahead of them—just visible through the trees—and then they started moving. Menendez made a motion to the others behind them, and the whisper of lightly disturbed leaves continued.
Ahead of them the land dipped, and then flattened out.
The last time Lee had been here, he’d gone in and out by vehicle, taking the dirt road to and from. But he thought he recalled how the terrain had been, and he remembered it as being on a plateau of sorts.
As they moved through the woods, the occasional lilt of voices became clearer.
At one point, the slamming of a car door reverberated through the woods.
Someone let out a long string of curses.
Lee’s pulse began to accelerate. The hard, steady beat that he knew so well. Unconsciously, he began to force his breathing into a steady pattern—sucking in a breath, then blowing it out through pursed lips.
Maybe it was Breckenridge, or one of his men. Maybe they were dealing with something on the topside of the bunker.
The point man came to a stop again. Lee could see enough now that he could tell the point man was close to the edge of a clearing, though he couldn’t see much beyond that. The point man didn’t transmit this time. He went prone, then rolled onto his side and made a quick motion with his hands.
Lee and Menendez approached again, going low, taking the last few yards to the point man on their hands and knees, and then sliding into place on their bellies, the three of them shoulder to shoulder.
The point man put two fingers to his eyes, then pointed straight ahead. His words were just an exhale of breath: “That’s not us.”
Lee peered through the pale dawn light.
About ten yards ahead of them, the trees cleared out. There was some brush at the tree line that obscured parts of the clearing beyond, but Lee was able to make out the basics.
There were three technicals and one van parked in the clearing.
Across from the vehicles stood the entrance to the bunker, disguised, as many bunkers were, as another bit of ubiquitous utilities—this one a shack that sat at the base of what was apparently a small cell tower.
There were men gathered around the vehicles. About a dozen of them.
And the point man was right.
They weren’t Tex’s men.
Every one of them was armed, a conglomeration of various rifles. The technicals were equipped with what Lee identified as M240s, and the gunners gripped their machine guns, addressing them to the entrance of the bunker.
They looked like they were waiting for something.
One of the men, who was again uttering a string of curses, paced back and forth, his eyes locked on the bunker entrance.
“Nuevas Fronteras?” Menendez whispered in Lee’s ear.
Lee stared at the dozen armed men, feeling his heart thudding against the forest floor. He nodded once. His mind shot off into several directions, grasping questions and hurling possible answers.
Were they trying to take the bunker? And if they were, why weren’t the bunker defenses chewing them to shreds? Lee had activated his bunker defenses before—automatic turrets that every bunker was equipped with. They had succeeded in ripping apart an entire horde of infected that had surrounded the bunker. They should’ve been able to make quick work of a dozen men.
“Whaddaya wanna do?” Menendez asked.
Lee licked his dry lips with a dry tongue, but before he could answer, a hiss of hydraulics reached their ears.
Lee’s eyes shot over to the bunker entrance.
The doors slid open.
They issued a single figure.
Not Breckenridge.
Not any of Tex’s men.
The figure jogged up to the man that had been pacing and cursing. He had armor plates on his chest and an AK in his hands. He jabbed a finger back behind him. “They got us pinned down right at the entrance!”
The man’s voice felt overly-loud in the stillness.
The pacing man stopped pacing, and cursed again, and it wasn’t until this moment that Lee realized it was an amalgamation of Spanish and English curses. And when the man spoke, it was with a thick accent.
“The rest of you—go.” He swiped an arm at them, as though scooping them towards the bunker. “Use the grenades. Blow them the fuck out of there.”
“That’ll wreck the supplies,” one of the men said, clearly a native English speaker.
The man in charge whirled on him. “I don’ give a fuck about the supplies right now! Mateo wants the bunker, he’s gonna get the fuckin’ bunker! We can’t get the fuckin’ bunker until you kill them all! No more questions. Get it done.”
The dozen men standing out in the open made for the bunker door.
The man in charge led them.
“Breckenridge is down there,” Menendez strained out. “But how are these guys getting in?”
The man in charge stopped at the bunker entrance. He accessed a panel in the side of the door, and rapidly tapped in a code.
Lee half-expected the bunker defenses to come alive as they were programmed to do—to respond to a wrong code with lethal force.
But they didn’t.
The doors slid open again, and the dozen men piled into the large freight elevator that would take them down to the bunker. The doors slid shut behind them.
The man in charge remained topside.
“They’ve got the codes,” Lee whispered, as he watched the man stalk away from the bunker entrance. “How did they get the codes?”
“We gotta stop them,” Menendez urged. “We can’t let them wipe Breck out!”
Lee’s eyes shot over to the technicals. The gunners had remained behind. Three machine guns still trained on the door. He blinked rapidly, trying to compute everything, but hardly any of it came together in any sensible fashion.
Compartmentalize. What do you know?
Nuevas Fronteras had access to the bunkers. How that happened didn’t matter—it only mattered that it was true. There were four men. Three machine gun turrets, and one man standing alone, although armed with an M4.
That man had the code to get in.
“We need to take the lead guy alive,” Lee said.
How the hell were they going to accomplish that?
Menendez stared at him, the same question in his eyes.
Lee hissed softly through his teeth. Then he keyed his comms. “Everyone, target the gunners in the turrets. Do not shoot the man in the white t-shirt that’s standing outside. Me and Menendez will handle him. Open fire when you see us charge him.”
“We’re gonna charge him?” Menendez gaped.
“You got a better idea?”
Menendez didn’t respond.
Lee stared at their target.
He was pacing again. Only twenty yards away, but twenty yards was a lot of distance to be running at someone. The man would have ample time to respond. But they didn’t have a choice. He was the one with the code. And time was running out for whoever was holding out inside that bunker. Every second Lee wasted up here, grenades were going to get thrown, and men were going to die.
“We gotta do this,” Lee said, more to himself than anything. He keyed the comms again. “Everyone, let me know when you’re in position and ready.”
There was a slight pause.
Off to the right, Lee heard a rustle in the leaves, and his heart squirmed into his throat, fearing the
man in charge might hear them. But he just kept pacing and murmuring to himself.
“Squad’s ready,” one of Menendez’s men responded with a whisper. “Targets acquired. It’s on you.”
No choice.
They had to do this.
Lee rose up off his belly, trying to keep low, but get his feet under him.
Beside him, Menendez did the same.
“Go right, I’ll go left,” Lee breathed out. “If you gotta shoot him, take him in the pelvis.”
Lee forced himself to wait.
The man was pacing again. Occasionally turning his back on them. That would give them invaluable seconds.
This is a bad idea.
But his other thoughts were like fire burning through him: How many are even left alive down there?
How long do they have?
Not long.
The man in charge turned away from them. His head tilted back, staring at the sky, letting loose something in Spanish that might’ve been a prayer, or another string of invectives.
Now.
Lee thrust himself up.
The dry leaves beneath him slipped under his feet. He almost went down. Caught himself on a tree, then used it to sling himself forward. A branch cracked. A low-hanging limb ripped across his face.
Lee’s eyes never left the man in charge.
Out of his peripheral, he saw Menendez, pulling ahead, and angling out, putting a little distance between Lee and him so that the man would not be able to take them both so easy.
The woods rushed.
The man jerked, looked over his shoulder.
Rifle reports bellowed out of the tree line, and one long string of automatic fire from one of Menendez’s SAW gunners, raking the bullets across the vehicles.
The man in charge flinched at the thunderous noise, eyes going wide, his grip seizing down on the rifle in his hands.
Out of the corner of Lee’s perception, he saw the nearest turret gunner begin to swing his M240 in Lee’s direction, and then he flailed about and crumpled, puffs of red mist erupting from him, giving his corpse a brief, crimson aura.
Only ten yards, and Lee was at a full sprint.
The man in charge finally met Lee’s gaze.
His eyes jagged left, catching sight of Menendez too.
A brief moment of indecision—exactly what Lee had hoped for—he couldn’t decide which to fire on first.
