“Take control of the situation?”
Gartrell sighed, and he knew his annoyance was showing through even though the captain’s questions were not only expected, they were proper. “We obviously won’t be able to stop the zeds for long, sir, but we’ll be able to maintain a buffer zone around your vehicle until we can roll one of the MRAPs up and get you aboard. All you have to do is stay inside and wait.”
“Really,” Berry said, the tone of his voice reflecting his disbelief.
“Really,” Gartrell replied, completely deadpan.
Berry looked at Gartrell for a long moment, then nodded. He turned to the civilian engineer standing nearby, still holding the acetylene torch Berry had used to weld the steel planking in place over the roller’s cab. “You’d better get in line, Billy. Good luck to you,” he said, indicating the MRAPs.
The engineer put the acetylene torch on the wheeled canister and nodded to Berry, then headed off.
“You guys better take your weapons and get back on the wall for now,” Gartrell told the soldiers that had assisted in fortifying the roller. “Stay close, and keep an eye on the captain and his road roller. We need them both.”
“Hooah, Sergeant Major.” The soldiers picked up their rifles and headed for one of the gangways.
Weaponsfire rang out from both the northern and southern walls, and from what Gartrell had overhead from the tactical radio net, the Rangers and Green Berets guarding the walls were slowly being driven back by the stenches. More gunfire came from the other side of the airfield, and Gartrell saw the Rangers, Green Berets, and SEALs emerge from the tent city, fighting a fierce rearguard action. Amidst the darkened tents, other shapes loomed—the necromorphs. Occasionally, something would flash in the darkness. The troops would respond to the flash instantly, pouring on the firepower in that area or directing the Apaches to engage with their cannons.
Back by the compromised eastern wall, the rest of the Apaches discharged aerial rockets and Hellfires at targets Gartrell couldn’t see. But he knew what they were. A moment later, the night virtually turned into day as an Air Force jet blasted past, pickling off bombs as it went. The eastern side of the camp went up as the weapons detonated. The flaming mass of the InTerGen main building started to collapse on one side from the ferocity of the shock waves. Gartrell hoped everyone had made it out, because if they hadn’t, they were going to stay there forever.
“Later, Sergeant Major,” Captain Berry said, his eyes wide and full of fear. He scurried into the road roller’s reinforced cab, started up the machine, and drove it at its full speed of eight miles per hour toward the closed gate in the western wall. He stopped there, lights off, engine idling.
Gartrell looked down at the acetylene torch canister beside him. It was actually two tanks, he saw—one for acetylene, the other for oxygen. After a moment’s thought, he grabbed the canister and tugged it along after him as he marched toward the line of MRAPs.
***
Gartrell found McDaniels and the rest of the remaining command staff standing around the lead MRAP. The vehicle was equipped with a .50 caliber machinegun in an enclosed cupola.
McDaniels looked at the acetylene torch rig. “What’s with that? What is it?”
“Acetylene and oxygen,” Gartrell said. “I figure some detcord or a blasting cap, a quick heave into the zeds, and boom! Thermobaric weapon.” He looked around at all the speculative faces. “What? Am I the only one thinking about fighting back? We can make this a retreat or a run away, and I’d prefer the former.” Gartrell pointed to the HEMT tankers, one of which was in the middle of hot-refueling one of the Apaches. “We can use the HEMTs, too. Roll ’em into the tent city where the zeds are, hit it with a forty millimeter grenade, and watch the first few thousand fuckers fry.”
“Already have some of our guys on that, Sarmajor,” Switchblade said. “Also the incendiary buffalos—”
As he spoke, an AH-6M Little Bird came out of its orbit overhead. It nosed down, charging toward the eastern wall. It fired a single seventy-millimeter aerial rocket at something by the wall, then banked away in a hard turn to the right. A great gout of liquid fire exploded into the sky in the east. A loud report followed it a moment later, but there was no shock wave; either the distance was too great, or the buildings and other structures between the blast and the airfield absorbed the energy. The spreading glow of fire blossomed into existence, and they all saw flames licking at the sky.
“And there goes one,” McDaniels said. “Carmody, tell Highball Two-Two that if that explosion stops the zed advance for a bit, he’s on my Christmas list.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“So what’s the op?” Gartrell asked.
“We’re bugging out, and in a big way,” McDaniels replied. “Long story short, if we’re not at least forty miles away from here by zero six hundred, we’re dead.”
“More stenches coming in?”
“All of them, but we already knew that. What we didn’t know is that the president has agreed to release a nuclear weapon over this camp at zero six hundred. I’m told the blast will kill millions of the stenches, and the 4th Infantry will mop up afterwards.”
Gartrell was gobsmacked. “Huh. And here I was getting all proud of myself for thinking of this.” He hefted the acetylene torch cart. “Well, won’t we be zapped by the fallout?”
“The wind’s blowing to the east. So it probably won’t matter much to us, but it’s going to be a great consequence to people in, say, Miami,” McDaniels said. “But I don’t want to be anywhere near the flash. That’s supposed to be full of deadly radiation as well, and I’d rather any explosions be between the bomb and zed.”
“Oh, hell yes.”
“As soon as the civilians are loaded, we’ll mount up the troops and take off,” McDaniels said. “We’ll have the Strykers and some dismounts fight rearguard for the rest of the convoy, and once everyone is across, we’ll blow the drawbridges and make our way to the west. Is that roller ready to go?”
“Roger that, as secure as we can make it without bolting mortars and rocket launchers on the thing. We should precede our departure with plenty of smoke, sir. The roller can only make six or eight miles an hour, and he’s not going to get very far. Once that thing comes across a ditch or a bomb crater or something, it’s history. And if it happens sooner rather than later, rescuing Captain Berry is going to be one tough nut to crack.”
“We’ll deal with that as it happens.” McDaniels turned to the MRAP behind him. “You’re with me in the lead vehicle, unless you’d prefer to command a separate rig.”
“That’s fine. Just so long as I’m up in the cupola, manning the fifty.”
McDaniels shrugged. “Your call. Switch, you’ll take the next unit. Take some tactical controllers with you, and some of the MI guys. I’ll keep Chase and the rest of the controllers. CAS is going to be key in our retreat,” McDaniels said, using the acronym for close air support.
“Roger that,” Switchblade said.
“Once the rest of the MRAPs are loaded with the civilians, they’ll mount up in anything else they’ve got—Humvees, M949s, HEMTs, every vehicle we have that’s not open-air.”
“Not enough rides for that, sir,” Gartrell said. “We’ve got, what, six hundred swingin’ johnsons out here?”
McDaniels nodded. “The rest will have to ride on top of the MRAPs, and provide suppressive fire while we make our way westward.”
Gartrell snorted. “Damn, no kidding?”
“Got a better idea?”
“Negative. I guess I don’t.”
“All right. Let’s get to it, then.”
***
Roche hung back with the remainder of his chalk, still wearing their SOICS and enjoying some greater maneuverability than the rest of the forces inside the camp. The stenches had flooded past the partially collapsed InTerGen main building and into the warren of tents, trailers, and generator housings after first visiting the cash and feasting on anyone they found inside. Roch
e hadn’t been on the detail guarding the facility, but as soon as the zeds broke into it, he had been part of the reaction force to go in and try to save as many people as possible.
The hospital had already been partially evacuated, with the only people remaining being the surgeons and their staff, who were in the middle of surgery when the stenches rolled in. Apparently, the zombies could smell the blood or something, because they went straight to the OR tents, overwhelmed the staff, and then ate everyone. By the time Roche and his element had made it to the OR tent, the carnage was pretty much over. Roche had never seen so much blood in one place before, and even he had a tough time keeping his lunch down when he saw the collection of ghouls crouching on one of the blood-soaked operating tables. Nothing was left of the patient but bones. In fact, one zombie had been sucking the fluid from the bare spinal column when Roche burst into the operating area. All the zombies turned toward him with hungry eyes, even though their stomachs were grossly distended after devouring so much human flesh.
The ensuing battle was over in less than two minutes. One of the great things about the SOICS’s targeting computer was that it could be programmed to assist the shooter in making specific target selections; in this case, the skulls of the dead. So long as there weren’t thousands of targets crowding into the engagement area—and in this instance, there were only twenty or so zeds in the OR—Roche just had to move the rifle toward the target and the rig almost always took care of the rest.
The gunfire drew more of the little dead bastards, and Roche’s element had to withdraw. As it was, three men were bitten, one seriously enough for Roche to send him back to the airfield. By that time, the zombies were all over the place. The fast ones liked to charge the Rangers from the shadows, rushing at top speed, perhaps thinking they could surprise them. But with the miniature millimeter-wave radar and the night vision visor each SOICS-equipped Ranger had built into his helmet, the zeds had a better chance of getting a guest spot on the zombie version of Saturday Night Fever. They almost always got plugged before they closed to within ten meters.
The slow ones were a little different. To the millimeter-wave targeting system, such a huge collection of corpses moving in the same direction would usually look like an amorphous blob. The Rangers would have to “John Wayne it” the old-fashioned way, lining up laser designators on their targets and pulling back on the bang levers. The slow, shambling horde made Roche nervous. Once it caught up to you, you were never going to be able to shake it, because it was just so huge it could envelop you.
And of course, the shooters sucked, too.
Roche had already engaged two of them. They weren’t very fast on the trigger, and they always seemed to aim to wound—a shot to the legs or the pelvis or lower back, something to immobilize or restrict the prey’s movement so the horde could catch it and eat. But they were getting more numerous, since so many thousands—maybe even upwards of a million—ghouls had been serviced by bullets, bombs, or flammables. The smart zeds were getting in on the act. They had their quarry cornered, and there was no way they were going to allow the others to eat it all. Roche was lucky he hadn’t been hit yet; he’d seen Doofus take a hit to the leg, one that hit his knee guard hard enough that the tissue around the joint started to swell so badly he could hardly walk, even while wearing a SOICS. He’d gotten a pass back to the airfield as well, and Roche hoped the soldier had enough sense to say yes if anyone asked him if he wanted to get in a helicopter and leave.
The horde was starting to flank them, and Roche wanted to get out of that particular circumstance. He reported the situation to his company commander—his immediate superiors were off the net, a euphemism for dead—and the captain advised him to fall back to the airfield and join the rest of the battalion in securing it. That sounded as awesome to Roche as a threesome in a swanky hotel room with twin Japanese sisters, so he was all over it. He ordered the element back to the airfield, and he covered them from the rear, blasting the hell out of any stenches that tried to creep up on them during their retreat.
He had to kill over fifty of the things.
“Yeah, hey, this is Iron Mike Three to Currahee Three-Six. We’ve got zeds everywhere back here. We need to do something kind of drastic to shut down the flow. Over.”
The captain he’d just spoken to didn’t respond. Roche transmitted twice more and got nothing back. The captain had gone off the net as well.
Wow, this is getting pretty bad.
To make matters worse, a red caution light started flashing inside his visor. He was running on reserve power. In forty minutes, give or take, his SOICS was going to run out of juice. He checked the status of the rest of his chalk, paging through the screens by moving the motion sensor cursor on the control panel strapped to his right wrist. Everyone else was in the same boat, though one Ranger had only twelve minutes of battery life remaining.
“All right, guys, let’s step it up. Everyone’s running out of juice, so head for the airfield. Double time,” he added. “Let’s put some distance between these things and us and get back to where we can either charge up or shuck the suits and do it the old-fashioned way. Move it out.”
The Rangers did as instructed, moving past the tents at over twenty miles an hour. Roche still guarded the rear of the formation, but the only zombies in the area were shamblers that couldn’t hope to keep up. They fell out of sight before Roche could kill them all with his SCAR.
At the airfield, the lights still burned brightly, and the Apaches and Little Birds orbited overhead, spitting fire and death at the zombies that tried to make it into the parking lot. The MRAPs were already fired up, and Roche could see Rangers escorting civilians into them. He laughed when he saw Shin, his face hard and hostile, helping a group of citizens into an MRAP. Shin hated Dudley Do-Right shit like that, and he’d never been able to separate his expression from his feelings on the matter.
The chalk pulled off their suits at the recharging station at the airfield. No juice was being delivered to it. The generator was gone, having been appropriated for another mission. Roche found another company commander and bitched to him about it.
“We don’t need SOICS where we’re headed, Roche,” the captain said. “Now find the rest of your company and get it organized. We’re moving out within the hour, maybe sooner if we can get this circus under control.”
Roche sighed and shook his head. Getting out of Dodge suited him just fine, whether he was wearing a Special Operations Infantry Combat System rig or just a pair of bright red Speedos. He returned to his element and directed them toward the MRAPs.
“Okay, let’s go ahead and provide security for the vehicles,” he said, glancing at the activity on the walls. “Lots of stuff going on all over the place. Let’s try and make it safer for everyone by making sure the transportation is squared away.”
***
“Colonel, all the civilians are aboard the MRAPs,” Captain Chase reported. He stood by the MRAP’s open tailgate, his M4 clutched in his hands, his headset tethered to an older field radio that was mounted to the rearmost wall of the armored vehicle. “The zeds are avoiding the incendiary fire at the eastern wall, sir. They’re pushing over the western, southern, and northern walls now and coming into the camp that way.”
“How many of them are headed our way?” McDaniels asked. He sat in the driver’s seat, but hadn’t started the big Cougar six-by-six.
“It sounds like all of them, sir,” Chase responded.
McDaniels grunted. He fired up his iPad and paged through the security camera screens. Several were out of commission, but he was able to get the strong impression the walls were indeed infested with the dead. Looking through the thick, bullet-resistant windows of the MRAP, he saw that the troops remaining on the western wall were already defending their territory from attackers coming off the other walls.
“If all the civilians are in the vehicles, let’s start pulling back our troops. I want them to start mounting up immediately. We probably don’t have a lot of t
ime left. And have Highball hit the incendiary tanker along the northern wall. Let’s get that operation underway and slow these damn things down.”
“Roger that.”
“Gartrell?”
Gartrell dropped down from the turret he’d been manning. “Sir?”
“How big of an explosion will that acetylene tank you have make?”
“Acetylene and oxygen? Sir, it’ll rattle your teeth loose.”
“We should probably deploy that to cover us,” McDaniels said. “If there’s a chance you can start the tent city on fire with it, it might help us out a bit.”
“Roger that.”
***
Gartrell ran through the airfield, towing the acetylene torch cart. The Rangers, SEALs, and Special Force troops had formed a defensive perimeter, crouching behind sandbagged revetments. There weren’t enough sandbags to go around the entire airfield, so the Strykers ferried Rangers from encounter to encounter, and the SEALs ripped through the area in their DPVs while the Green Berets did the same on their ATVs and dirt bikes. It almost looked like a Motocross event.
“Where you headed, bro?” Master Sergeant Dusty Roads asked from his seat on an ATV. He looked at Gartrell with tired eyes, his night vision goggles thrown back on their plastic mount.
“Got a little surprise for the stenches.” Gartrell patted the tank. “Acetylene and oxygen. God’s little fuel air explosive.”
Roads whistled. “Cool. What’re you going to do with it?”
“Set it off in the tent city over there.” Gartrell indicated the rows of tents beyond the firing positions. Most of the area was in darkness, as several of the generators had been taken out during the action.
“Eh, dude, you realize that area’s full of zeds, right?”
“Well listen, tiger. This tank’s not going to do much if none of them are around, you know?” Gartrell looked at the ATV. “Hey, nice ride. Can I borrow it?”
The Rising Horde, Volume Two (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 25
