There is a sound like a thunderclap, and a smoking hole appears where the top hinge had been. Welch aims the shotgun at the lower hinge. It disintegrates, and his thick leg shoots out and smashes the door in. He steps back, and the rest of us move through the doorway in a single-file line.
Montclair is first, squatting low as he scans the stairwell, his rifle following his eyes. After a couple of seconds, he moves down the steps. I take up the position behind him, and Keogh follows right on my ass. Welch and the Sarge bring up the rear. The other team is assigned to the third floor. We have the second.
This building must have been some kind of factory in its past life. Some developer came in, slapped up some plaster, redid the plumbing, and scrubbed down the bricks and all the exposed pipes to give it that retro-industrial look that gives all the yuppies a giant boner these days.
The first couple of apartments we check are empty—abandoned a week or more ago in anticipation of the impending shitstorm. Dresser drawers vomit clothing, suitcases lie discarded with their contents spread across the floor, and the smell of sour milk and spoiled cottage cheese billow out from ransacked kitchens. We clear both places inside of five min-utes.
We catch the scent of something stronger than stale bread in the third apartment. A whiff of corruption seeps from beneath the front door.
It’s times like this when I wish I still wore my MOPP suit, regardless of the summer heat. The gas mask would make the smell of death somewhat more bearable.
Pat Welch breaches the door quickly, and we move into the loft-style apartment on high alert. The raunchy stench is overpowering, but we see no DICs. It doesn’t take long to identify the source of the smell.
There is no note on the nightstand or clasped in the hands of the couple who had decided to kick off together; just an empty bottle of Ambien that had fallen off the bed. The smell of graveyard rot and feces swirls throughout the room, but the bodies are unmolested, which means we’re safe.
Suicide is a fairly common exit strategy these days. We don’t give the bodies a second look after we confirm there aren’t any munchers hiding in the closet or bathroom. Sorry if it sounds jaded, but I figure with suicide, you’re almost guaranteed a less painful death than the rest of us will experience.
As we creep up to the next apartment, we hear muffled voices from within. We surround the door, and Sarge gives a quick nod to Montclair who raps his knuckles on it. The voices quiet, and Montclair gives the same speech he’s been using ever since we returned to the states.
“This is the National Guard! We are authorized by the Government of the United States to search your home for infected citizens. Open the door and step back to allow us entry. We do not wish to harm anyone and will be as quick as possible if you cooperate. If you resist or interfere with our search, we can and will use deadly force to secure these premises.”
I am prepared for anything, including a roomful of tweakers who’ve decided that taking out a bunch of government pigs is as good a way to go out as any. I can’t tell you how many times we came this close to getting fried in some goddamn meth lab explosion. So, when the door slowly creaks open and a middle-aged man peeks out with a nervous look on his face, I’m not the only one who visibly relaxes.
“Wha—what do you want?”
I don’t recognize the accent; he might be Hispanic, but I’m not sure. His jet-black hair is slicked back, but his curls refuse to lie flat. His skin has an olive tone. He is small, shrunken with fear.
I catch a disappointed look on Pat’s face as he lowers his shotgun and moves forward, ignoring the man as he glances past him into the apartment. The man steps back and raises his hands as if he is going to try to prevent the big bastard from coming in, but he stops short before touching Pat’s chest.
“No! You can—cannot come in! This is my house,” the oily little man stutters as we slide past him. His eyes dart from one of us to another as he tries to figure out who is in charge.
Montclair snags Keogh by the shoulder and pushes him in front of the frantic homeowner. Keogh knows the drill. Listening to citizens moan about their rights is a job for the junior member of the team.
I hear several gasps and a shriek as we enter a cozy living room. It doesn’t help that we have our weapons at the ready, but we’re not into taking risks these days. At least we don’t make people get on the floor and lace their fingers behind their heads anymore. Still, when the National Guard bursts into a home, I guess most people don’t appreciate how civil we’re trying to be. Go figure.
A quick scan of the room assures us no one is armed. My hunch is that the LT’s daughter isn’t here, but we have to do the full search of each apartment. At least until we find her.
An elderly couple remains sitting on a couch while the three others in the room stand as we enter, their eyes filled with terror. One of them so closely resembles the guy at the door that I’d be shocked if the two weren’t brothers. The younger two in the room, a boy and a girl, are teenagers.
The layout of this apartment is more traditional than the others. The main room is small, with drywall and a ceiling instead of bare concrete and exposed pipes. The décor isn’t modern or sleek. It isn’t even shabby-chic. It’s just shabby. An old console TV dominates a corner of the room and is surrounded by several beat-up chairs and a couch upholstered in a dingy floral pattern. Several tacky paintings with gold-leaf frames add to the Old World ambiance of the place, if that’s what you want to call it. Several crucifixes share the walls with the pictures, and candles burn on every available surface in the room.
I notice a smoky, spicy scent on the air and spot an incense burner sitting on the coffee table, along with a large stack of yellowing newspapers and magazines. None is in english.
Not surprisingly, the inhabitants look like they’ve been run through the wringer. True, the world’s gone to hell, and those of us still hanging around are tired, scared, and on the verge of losing our minds. Still, I get a strange vibe from these people. I’ve done this gig long enough to trust my instincts, so I have a pretty good idea what’s going on.
They’re hiding something.
Now I don’t have some deep understanding of psychology, but I do know that people’s priorities are as out of whack now as when things were ‘normal’. They still worry about money, possessions, and other trivial garbage, like whether or not the illegal alien in their family is in danger of being deported. Yep, even with the apocalypse breathing down their necks, people are still worried that Uncle Enrique is about to get his ass tossed back across the border.
When Sergeant Vickers orders Welch and Montclair to search the bedrooms, the family starts protesting. I don’t know what they’re screaming, but I keep nodding, telling them to remain calm. My guess is that they don’t understand me any better than I understand them.
The man who’d opened the door stops jawing at Keogh and rushes to follow Montclair and Welch, pleading with them to leave the doors alone—or so I guess. Pushing the howling man away, Pat kicks the door open. His eyes grow wide just before several sets of arms reach through the doorway and grab for him.
The sound of the twelve-gauge is a like a bomb going off in the enclosed apartment, but his targets ignore the assault and yank him off his feet and into the bedroom. To me, it looks like he’s been snagged by some giant hook, like the kind they used on The Gong Show when someone sucked.
Everyone already standing in the living room charges at us, seemingly as enraged as the ripened bodies pouring out the bedroom door.
I can hear Pat screaming as he tries to rack another shell, but I have no idea if he got another shot off. Before Montclair can make his way up to where the stiffs are lurching into the hall, the door behind him opens, and someone jumps on him. I can’t tell if it’s another DIC. Montclair and his assailant fall back into the bedroom, out of sight behind the mass of bodies clogging the hallway.
We attempt to regain control of the situation in the living room, holding the family at bay with our sho
tguns. Everyone is screaming. Maybe that’s why none of us notice the girl coming up behind Sarge. My best guess is that she had been hiding underneath the dining room table, which was draped with gauzy material that hung down to the floor.
The only warning she gives is a devilish scream as her butcher knife slides into his neck. I turn in time to see a geyser of blood spray her face as she rains curses and blows down on Sergeant Vickers with equal vigor.
Both the girl, who couldn’t be more than twelve, and Sarge are hosed down by the automatic fire from Keogh’s rifle. Small, ragged holes appear on the girl’s chest as the rounds cut her to ribbons. Vickers fares slightly better thanks to his flack vest, but small blooms of blood materialize on his arms and midsection as he topples to the floor.
I try leveling my own rifle, but I’m not sure whom to target. A small legion of the undead had already steamrolled the guy who’d met us at the door, and while several ghouls were starting to get busy ripping him into bite-sized pieces, more stumbled past his body and into the living room.
Keogh screams something at me, but since the apartment has turned into a freak show of noises and smells, I have no idea what he’s trying to say. The smell of blood, cordite, shit, and incense assault my nose. The stench and the ringing in my ears whip up a sensory tsunami inside my head.
That’s probably why the dude I assumed to be the brother of the guy getting his intestines ripped out on the hallway floor is able to rush up and start pounding on my flack vest as he spits out curses at me.
His actions probably save my life.
“Get off of me!” I scream as I use the butt of my M16 to dislodge him. The blow sends him reeling, and he slams his head into a wall and crashes to the floor. The old couple who’d been glued to the couch finally get off their asses and move to his side. The two teenagers struggle to avoid the snapping jaws and grasping claws of their undead relatives.
“Pat! Elgin!” I shout down the hall, hoping against hope to get an answer. The only response I receive is the sound of a door slamming behind me. I whip around to discover that Keogh is gone. I think I scream the word ‘coward’ before I turn back around and try to figure out what the hell to do.
We’d been sloppy. No doubt about it. After thirteen missions just like this one, we’d gotten cocky and paid the price.
I look around and realize that everyone in the room with me is either dead or about to be, including me if I don’t make a move. The teens are on the verge of being overwhelmed, as several zombies have them surrounded on their elevated perch up on the couch while the rest of the stiffs not already chowing down have their sights set on the old couple huddled over the guy I’d knocked unconscious…and on yours truly.
I open fire, not bothering to switch from the three-round bursts to the single-shot mode we’d been trained to use on the DICs. I pepper the two closest DICs with bullets and watch their heads explode. The rage that grips me makes me want to tear them to shreds, but I restrain myself enough to keep my bursts steady and spaced out enough so I can con-tinue targeting their heads.
Still more dead bodies pour out of the hallway. All I can guess is that the incense and candles had covered up the stench of all the dead bodies, and the screaming of the family had drowned out any moaning we might have heard when we burst in.
Again, I resist the urge to keep my finger clamped on the trigger as I line up another shot. The far wall is already redecorated with bone and brain matter as I spray the crowd again.
As I am about to do a third sweep, my finger slides away from the trigger just in time to avoid splitting Elgin from shoulder to asshole with bullet holes as he crashes through a line of shambling corpses like a guided missile. He dives into the living room and is back on his feet in an instant, pointing his Beretta at the crowd as he backs up toward me.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” he shouts.
“What about Pat?” It’s a stupid question and I know it, but I have to ask.
“He’s history, man! Let’s move!”
I begin to feel exhilarated. Elgin and I are gonna make it out of this shit alive. He has the radio, so we can call the other team and figure out what the fuck to do about this mess. My vote is for recalling the Black Hawk and heading back to the Safe Zone. Screw the LT’s daughter, and screw Keogh. They can rot for all I care.
I turn to grab the doorknob, and that’s when Elgin screams. At the sound, I feel like all the blood in my body is replaced with boiling water. Time goes all runny inside my head; I’m moving too slow…way too goddamned slow. It feels like I’m underwater, fighting against the current.
When I finally get turned around, I spot Elgin near the dining room table. All I can think is, How in the hell did he get all the way over there? as I stare at the stiff hanging off his back, nuzzling the spot where Elgin’s right ear used to be.
Elgin swings around, trying to shake the man loose. He breaks the DIC’s grip and the dead man stumbles backward with my buddy’s ear still clenched between his teeth. A bullet from Elgin’s sidearm finishes him, and the DIC slumps to the ground.
I remain frozen, shocked into submission. That’s the only excuse I can come up with as to why I don’t try to stop the two rotters that emerge from the kitchen from tackling Elgin and pulling him, screaming, to the floor.
I hear the empty click of Elgin’s sidearm after one last shot clips the shoulder of one of the zombies on top of him. He tries pummeling them, but they accept the blows with indifference as one sinks its teeth into the thick meat of his thigh near his crotch while the other tears through Elgin’s flak jacket with blood-drenched claws.
As I stand there, my rifle muzzle dipping toward the floor, a whirlwind of blood and guts unfolds before my eyes. Elgin screams my name while the old couple and the unconscious man huddled beneath them are assaulted by at least three ghouls. Sarge and the little girl who’d stabbed him are already being torn apart, as were the teenagers, who’d made their last stand on the gore-stained couch. I know the carnage is only going to get worse, and I have to get out of here, but I can’t move…even when I see Pat.
He’s still larger than life, though diminished in some ways. His face and neck have been ripped apart but his eyes are still there, shifting to the left and right until they lock in on me. His ACUs are drenched in blood, and strands of intestines and other dark tissue dangle in swinging ropes and loops from a huge hole beneath his ribcage. The meat sloshes against the tops of his legs as he limps in my direction. He isn’t distracted by the veritable buffet of twitching food spread across the living room floor; he only has eyes for me. I feel the hard metal tip of the doorknob digging into my back. I must have snapped out of my little stupor enough to creep backwards toward the door when I saw Pat coming for me. Elgin is still screaming, and to be honest, I probably am too. The idea of that big dumb Mick getting his hands on me is not how I want to check out. My sweaty hand slips on the knob a couple of times before I got a solid grip on it. I really don’t want to turn around and expose my back to Pat, but I have to so I can wrench the door open.
As the door opens, I feel a large hand slam down on my shoulder, scratching and grabbing for me. I leap out of the apartment like my ass is on fire. Somehow, I manage to pull the door shut behind me.
I back away as my mind races. Think, goddammit, think! I can’t take my eyes off the door. Three of my guys are in there, one of them already turned. Another is still screaming my name, and he has our radio. The other team is one floor up…and they must have heard the shots! They know we’re in trouble.
“I’ll wait for them; they’ll come for me. I’ll wait for them; they’ll come for me…” I keep repeating myself, trying to drown out the fading cries of Elgin Montclair, who’s begun pleading for his momma to come for him. I know as I stand here that the dying cries of my friend will haunt me forever.
When Elgin’s cries mercifully cut off, I find myself able to think again. We’re supposed to report in to the other team every ten minutes. Even if they hadn’
t heard the gunfire, they would still know something was wrong by our radio silence. We last checked in after the suicide apartment; when I glance at my watch, I can’t believe that less than eight min-utes have passed since then.
My team had been wiped out in less than eight fucking minutes.
A heavy thud explodes from the other side of the apartment door and I nearly jump out of my boots. My heart tries to pound its way out of my chest as the door vibrates under undead Pat’s oversized fist.
“Where the fuck is the other team?”
The pounding on the door grows louder and more insistent, as if the sound of my voice excites my undead friend.
At the same time, screams trickle down from the third floor, followed by the staccato rhythm of several M16s being fired at once. The gunfire continues sporadically, but the screams hold steady. They grow louder and louder, and then, without preamble, they stop.
Apparently, Sergeant Stein’s team is out of commission, too.
I back toward the steps leading to the ground floor, keeping my eyes on the apartment. The banging intensifies, and I can imagine Elgin joining Pat as they do their damnedest to get to their good old pal Sam, who has some payback coming.
As I reach the stairwell, two things happen. A flash-bang grenade explodes on the third floor, and the door to the apartment explodes off its hinges.
I take a giant step back into the stairwell and, in my panic, my feet get twisted up underneath me. I feel my leg snap as it comes down awkwardly when I graze the railing with my fingertips, just before my body tumbles down the steps. When I finally hit the bottom, my world is one painful explosion of bright flashing stars and flaming agony.
I grunt, resisting the almost uncontrollable urge to cry out in agony as I look down at my oddly twisted leg. In my pain-spiked delirium, the leg looks hilarious, like some cartoon character’s rubbery limb that can bend in all sorts of creepy ways.
I retrieve my fallen rifle and note with relief that there is no one at the top of the steps. I twist around on the floor until I can see the front entrance of the building. There’s no one on the ground level and, for some unknown reason, God decided to smile upon me and not send a torrent of stiffs down the stairs. My guess is that Pat and the others headed up to the third floor in search of the source of the screams.
Eye Witness: Zombie Page 3
