It was not.
A sick, lurching feeling pulled at my stomach as the ghoul began struggling to its knees. I could see my shot had hit its target, but evidently had not caused enough damage to kill the thing. I aimed again, held my breath, and fired. Another crack, and this time, the ghoul stayed down.
Tough motherfucker.
I started scanning the streets again, but my view swirled and moved skyward. The helicopter banked hard left, gained a little altitude, and circled toward the eastern side of the district. For just an instant, I saw the other helicopter high overhead and Great Hawk’s head looking downward from the port side door.
“All stations, Mission Lead,” the headset squawked. “Three targets spotted in area designated Victor. Squads Bravo and Charlie, converge on Victor. Eagle One will pop smoke on the target area. Maintain standoff at one hundred meters. Eagle One will provide fire support. Bravo, Charlie, take down any infected that come your way.”
“Roger, Mission lead. Bravo en route.”
“Mission Lead, Charlie is en route to Victor.”
I had a glimpse of four Humvees changing direction, and then they were out of sight.
“Roark, find us a field of fire. Thompson, you got smoke?”
“Affirmative.”
Gabe motioned him over and pointed out the door. “You see that row of white shipping containers?”
Thompson nodded.
“Put a marker right in the middle of them.”
Gabe moved away and let Thompson take his spot. The ex-soldier removed a 40mm shell from his tactical vest, opened the breach on the M-203 mounted to his M-4 carbine, loaded the shell, and took aim. Two seconds later, the weapon’s recoil thumped him backward. The roar of the Blackhawk’s engines swallowed the noise from the shot, and I could not see where it landed.
Thompson keyed his mic and said, “Smoke on target.”
“Bravo, Charlie, Mission Lead. Confirm visual on smoke.”
The two squad leaders responded they had visual and were on the way. Thompson backed away from the door and returned to the bench.
“Holland,” Gabe said. “Talk to me.”
“I got eyes on ‘em, but there’s civilians in my line of fire. Your call.”
Gabe’s expression registered an internal struggle. I’m no mind reader, but in this case, I didn’t have to be. My friend was weighing the cost of giving the order to fire, which would no doubt cause civilian casualties, against risking the safety of his comrades in order to give Holland a better shot. In the end, his lifelong devotion to protecting the innocent won out.
“Roark,” he said, “find a clearing and bring us down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Eric,
Refugee District
The pilot banked left and circled, bringing us lower. I moved closer to the port side door.
“Roark, get us close to the deck but don’t land. Riordan, Thompson, get down there and draw those big Grays away from the crowd. As soon as they’re down, find a rooftop. We’ll come get you.”
I slapped Gabe once on the shoulder to acknowledge. Thompson did the same. The scope on my carbine was at its highest setting, so I dialed it down to one-power and did a tactical reload.
As my hands moved, a not-so-small subconscious voice was howling that this was a terrible idea. That going down there into that swirl of death and mayhem was the worst decision of my life. I ignored the voice and focused on taking in the battlefield picture. The beginnings of a plan emerged, but any measure of success was going to be contingent on a lot of things going right. And I knew from hard experience that Mr. Murphy tended to make his presence known in these situations.
The skids were four feet off the ground. I looked at Thompson. He looked back and nodded, indicating with his hand he would follow my lead.
“Let’s go!” Gabe shouted.
I scooted forward, ducked my head, and pushed off the side of the chopper. The moment I hit the ground, I moved to my left. Behind me, I heard a grunt and Thompson appeared at my side. The roar of rotor wash was too loud for speech, so I motioned Thompson toward a space between two shipping containers where no one appeared to be. The chopper’s engines sang a louder tune as the pilot throttled up to gain altitude. I watched for a moment to see which way they would turn.
And then the whole world went sideways.
There was a moment of pure disorientation. My left shoulder hurt and a weight on my side was making it hard to breath. Then the weight moved off me, grabbed the pull handle on the back of my vest, and yanked me upright.
“What the hell?”
Thompson pointed. “Look!”
A big gray monster, standing as tall as Gabe and equally as heavy-looking, spared us a glance as it trotted past and leapt for the helicopter’s retreating skid.
No way. It’s too high.
I struggled to catch my breath, slowly realizing Thompson had just saved me from the roaring monstrosity currently flying through the air. The two of us watched it leap in horrified fascination, mouths agape, unable to believe what we were seeing. The creature seemed to hang in the air an impossibly long time, its clawed hands outstretched toward the Blackhawk’s skids. The helicopter was moving away, but not quickly enough, and the hands hit the skids and clamped on. The creature swung until its legs were under the belly of the aircraft. I saw Holland dive backward and Gabe clutching at the door as the Blackhawk dipped to port under the sudden weight. The pilot quickly righted the ship and regained altitude.
“Contact right!”
I brought my attention back to the ground and saw a group of six infected coming toward us. The rifle came up on its own, took aim, and fired. A head snapped back, and the ghoul went down. I acquired another target and fired. The shot dropped it, but there was no more time to aim. Thompson started running backward, one hand waving at me to do the same. I let my rifle hang by its sling—the infected were too close to use it now—drew my Glock, and sprinted to gain distance over the approaching ghouls.
The situation was deteriorating quickly. All thoughts of the chopper and home and my family and everything that did not involve running and shooting fell away. I had the presence of mind to snap down my helmet’s face shield an instant before everything became a stir of violence and noise.
Faces appeared in my vision, snarling and howling. I put the front sight of my pistol between their eyes and fired again and again. The faces went down, giving me a little space. Thompson broke hard right, and I went along with him. The next thing I knew we had circled around behind the last two infected pursuing us. A gun went off beside me and a short, skinny woman with a ragged hole where her throat used to be collapsed. I aimed at a little boy with half his left arm missing and pulled the trigger. He took two more steps and fell face down with the top half of his delicate skull blown apart.
And then the movement stopped. I checked my flanks. Saw Thompson doing the same. Nothing inbound. We stood in a small eye at the center of a swirling maelstrom of chaos.
The chopper.
Looking up, I found the Blackhawk. The big Gray had levered itself up and gripped the chopper’s deck with one hand. It was hard to tell from where I stood, but I could have sworn the thing’s fingers had punched through the metal floor.
Gabe’s head appeared, and then his hands. He was clutching his Sig Sauer and aiming at the ghoul’s head. There was a flash, and the thing’s head snapped back. I expected it to fall, but to my surprise, it held on, still trying to haul itself upward. Gabe shifted, found his balance, and fired twice more. The ghoul went limp but did not fall, somehow still clinging to the Blackhawk. Gabe holstered his pistol, drew his falcata, and chopped at the hand still holding on to the helicopter. The ghoul finally tumbled free.
In that instant, it occurred to me my assessment had been correct. The fucking thing’s fingers had punched through the helicopter’s skin deep enough to use it as a handhold. I tried to imagine that same hand gripping a human throat and found myself recoiling from the thou
ght.
“Did you see that?” Thompson shouted, his voice an octave too high.
“Yeah, I saw it.” I looked around again. A few infected had noticed us and were turning our way. They looked like normal ghouls.
Except…
“Shit. Ethan, look.”
He turned to where I pointed. Another knot of a dozen or so infected were headed toward us. But these did not exhibit the swaying, lurching shamble we were used to seeing. Rather, they were steady on their feet, approaching at a jogging pace. Faster than a walk, but not as fast as a run. And there was none of the usual stumbling or tottering, no twitching spasms or jerking limbs. It reminded me of the way the big Grays moved, which led me to a deductive connection that brought me no comfort at all.
“What the fuck?” Thompson said, his voice high and anxious. “That last bunch was the same way.”
“You mean faster?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t notice. Too busy trying not to die.”
Thompson glanced behind us. “More coming from the west. We need to move.”
I ran after him toward a cluster of shipping containers. At the same moment, the air shifted, and a driving wind came from the north. My view of the streets was obscured by dust, debris, and swirling black smoke. Cold, biting air sliced through all my layers of clothing and armor and stung my eyes. I kept moving, coughing and blinking, hoping against hope I was not mired in as deep a cluster-fuck as it seemed.
Something told me I was about to be disappointed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Eric,
Refugee District
“We need to climb,” I shouted over the cacophony of wind, gunshots, and screaming. The howling of the undead rode on the air like vengeful ghosts.
“Won’t do us any good against those big Grays,” Thompson replied.
“One problem at a time.”
When we reached the stack of containers I turned and covered our six while Thompson scrambled upward. There were ten ghouls close enough to cause a problem, with more coming up behind them. I holstered the Glock, switched back to my carbine, and took aim. Ten seconds later, our pursuers were reduced by half. Above me, I heard Thompson firing his M-4.
“I got it. Get up here.”
There was no more time to think. My only option was to trust Ethan’s aim and start climbing. I tossed my carbine onto the container’s roof, took three steps back, sprinted, and jumped. A lip of steel on top of the container gave me a good handhold.
Summoning all my strength, I hauled myself upward, boots scrambling for purchase. Thompson fired his weapon with one hand while reaching down and grabbing my belt with the other. He pulled hard, giving me the lift I needed to throw a leg over the top and roll onto the platform. Less than a second later, I felt a shudder beneath me and a series of hollow booms. Looking down, I saw half a dozen ghouls bashing themselves against the wall, eyes livid with starving insanity, mouths wide around bared teeth.
“Fuck me…”
“Two big ones inbound,” Thompson said. His voice had gained in pitch and his breathing was shallow and rapid.
“Keep it together, Ethan. If we panic, we die.”
No response, but he did set his jaw and take a deep breath. I stood and turned a three-sixty.
“Nothing behind us or on our flanks. Focus on the big guys. You take the one on the left.”
“Got it.”
I knelt, steadied my aim, and sighted in on one of the big Grays. It was twenty yards away across an empty space between shanties and containers. The reticle found the center of its face and then tracked a little higher, the crosshairs coming to rest at the crown of the monster’s head. If I knew Gabe, he had probably zeroed my rifle for 200 yards, meaning I needed to aim a little high at this range. I had time for maybe two shots, and then it would be on top of us. My finger squeezed the trigger slowly and the rifle went off. The Gray’s head snapped back, a neat hole between its eyes, and it collapsed. The back of its head had blown open, revealing a crater roughly the size of a golf ball. The previous ghoul I had killed had taken two bullets to the side of the head, the first one not getting the job done.
Straight-on shots work better.
It made sense. A tumbling bullet moving front-to-back through the skull would reduce just about anything’s brain to mush.
To my left, Thompson’s rifle coughed once, then twice.
“Shit.”
I looked over. Thompson had missed his target. Less than twenty feet away now. No time for the rifle. Moved it around to my side. Drew my Glock.
And then the big ghoul was flying straight at us.
We both dove backward, a startled, guttural cry escaping my throat. The creature had slightly misjudged the distance, not quite on vector to land on us. Out of instinct I threw my legs up, planted my forearms on the roof, and kicked at the ghoul’s midsection. Its weight was immense, but I managed to thrust it up and over so that it sailed past us. Twisting around, I saw its head and shoulders bounce off the far end of the container as it tumbled over the edge.
“Get up!” I yelled. “It’s coming back!”
The Glock was still in my hand. I stood up and moved to the edge of the container, praying the monster had not regained its feet. Looking down, I saw it was still picking itself up. With no time to waste, I leveled the pistol and fired a double tap. One of the bullets carved a groove through the top of its skull, and the other blew a hole in its neck. The Gray didn’t flinch. It flexed its legs and leapt high.
There was an instant of vivid panic, followed by a strange peace. The world slowed down. I knew I would not be able to get out of the way in time. My hand began raising the Glock toward my head. I did not remember telling it to, the hand just seemed to know what was needed. This was not the way I had hoped to leave the world, even though I had always known it was a possibility, but better this than being torn apart and eaten alive. Not to mention what would come after.
But the gun never made it. Something hit me from behind and took me over the edge of the container. A twisted gray hand swiped at my face but missed. The next thing I saw was the ground rushing toward me. I twisted into the fall, landing off balance and desperately trying to roll. The impact drove the breath out of me, and then the world went dark for a moment. As my vision returned, I dazedly realized the loud crack I had just heard was my helmet bouncing off the concrete sidewalk.
Something heavy pinned me down for a moment, and then the weight moved away. I tried to plant my hands and stand up, but the world was spinning too fast. A pair of boots appeared in my vision, and I could hear someone shouting. Then there were gunshots coming from somewhere. I managed to roll over on my side toward the noise. Thompson was standing in front of me firing his pistol. I saw my Glock on the ground nearby. I wanted to crawl to it, but my body was having trouble taking orders.
Thompson fired twice more in quick succession. I looked back toward the ghoul. It was on its knees, arms extended, mouth open, rows of alligator teeth snapping like a cartoon piranha. Another crash of gunfire, and a gout of black and red goop poured out from a crack in the shattered skull. The ghoul collapsed and stopped struggling.
“Holy Christ,” Thomson said breathlessly.
The spinning in my head slowed and feeling gradually returned to my limbs. I made it up to my hands and knees and stayed there for a moment. This was not the first time I had taken a hard shot to the dome, and I knew the next few seconds would tell me how bad this one was.
I breathed deep, in through the nose, out through the mouth. No wave of nausea. No splitting pain at the back of my skull. No dizziness. All good signs.
I got to one knee and pushed up a little farther. Thompson came over, caught me under the arm, and helped me stand up.
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah, just give me a minute.”
I shook my head to clear the last of the cobwebs. A few deep breaths and a side-to-side stretch told me my ribs were not broken. I pushed away from Thompson,
picked my Glock up off the ground, and checked my rifle. It was fine. Apparently, I had broken its fall.
“We have to go,” Thompson said. “I can hear more infected coming.”
“Yeah, I hear them too.”
I looked around trying to figure out what to do next. For the moment there were no infected in sight, but that would not last long. They had heard us and gotten a fix on our position. The volume of their approaching howls told me we had less than a minute before they started pouring around corners on all sides of us. If that happened, we were screwed. I checked in all directions, not much liking what I saw.
“Sounds like the ghouls are coming from the east and south,” I said. “We can head north and find another vantage point.”
“Sounds good.”
We started running up the street, keeping our pace slow to conserve energy. My left knee was sore, and a headache had blossomed between my eyes that made me want to curl up and sleep for month.
Thompson looked over his shoulder. “What do we do if we see more of those things?”
“You still got that grenade launcher?” I said.
It was a rhetorical question, but Thompson glanced down anyway, eyes fixing on the black metal tube hanging below his carbine’s handguard.
“Yes, I do.”
“Any point-detonation or buckshot rounds?”
Thompson slapped his vest. “Two point-dets, one buckshot. Don’t think the buckshot’s gonna help, though.”
“It will if you aim for the legs.”
“Good point.”
Overhead, I heard the roar of engines and the beat of rotors. The Blackhawk flew past, circling to give Gabe a view of us. I waved to let him know we were okay. Gabe waved back from the doorway, pointed eastward, and then mimed shooting a rifle. I raised both thumbs and pumped my arms up and down to acknowledge. The chopper turned and headed westward again.
Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End Page 13
