by Nick Cole
He sidestepped over to the door, craned his neck above the blood smear along the glass and checked the space beyond. A small walkway ran around the length of an opulent marble-covered lobby. One floor below that opened onto another street farther down the hill that was Downtown LA. Raw human remains, torn and bloody, lay soaking into the hotel carpet on just the other side of the glass door.
Braddock entered and followed his MP5 through. He waited for only a second, listening. Listening for screaming, gunshots, groans, rasps, shuffling feet… Large carpeted hallways led off the main walkway surrounding the lobby below. The air-conditioning was at full blast. Bending down to inspect the remains, he conducted a quick one-handed search through the torn shreds of what had once been a well-dressed businessman. He found the smartphone he knew that type of man wouldn’t be caught dead without.
It was out of power.
He took off his ruck and set it down next to the cream white wall dotted with strange, gold-colored art installations. He slung the assault rifle across his neck and quickly searched along the wall for an outlet. Once he located one, he pulled out a small clamshell plastic case from one of his cargo pockets and opened it. He tried a few of the adaptors inside, found the one that would fit the dead man’s phone, and had it charging a moment later.
While he waited for the minimum required charge for the phone to work, he drank some water from the camel system contained in the ruck and inhaled a chocolate and peanut butter power bar. A little more water and he bent to the phone.
“C’mon,” he muttered as he waited for the thing to find a connection. When it did, he called up the search engine and typed in dept19.net/doormouse/ which quickly bounced him into the Dark Net, landing at an anonymous site that showed only a blank screen.
THUD
One of the Infected slammed into the glass and blood-smeared door, its eyes glaring hate as it moaned at Braddock. In one swift motion Braddock grabbed the MP5 with one hand, pulled the sling over his head, aimed and put a bullet through the thing’s skull. It fell over, dead again, beyond the glass door.
Braddock returned to the phone.
He tapped the keys and entered his identity even though no characters appeared on the screen.
Sam Adams.
Then he typed a password.
A moment later a live chat icon appeared.
“Darling, are you okay? I’ve been so worried about you.” It was a woman’s voice. A sandy, husky, familiar purr.
“I’m fine, baby,” said Braddock emotionlessly. “I’ve managed to get help…” He hesitated. Help was the keyword. They’d know what he meant. But how to say the next part?
“And?” came the woman’s voice.
Friendly and foreign meta-data algorithms would be scanning every conversation. The words used had to seem harmless and as innocuous as possible. Natural to the situation. “Normal,” had been the emphasis during the SOP Commo section brief back when this Op began twelve months ago.
Except, thought Braddock, the world was ending now. Everyone with a cell phone was freaking out trying to get help or telling their loved ones goodbye. That’s the new normal, right now.
“They want me to go with them, baby,” said Braddock. “And I’m not sure where we’re going.”
Pause.
“Darling,” said the husky purr, with real concern in her voice. “This will probably be our last conversation.”
Silence.
Was she just acting? Was she just giving it the emotion needed to trick the meta-data crawlers? Or was it real? “Our family… we’re not going to make it.”
Braddock knew he wasn’t watching everything he needed to watch at that moment inside a downtown being rapidly overrun by Infected. Beyond deep inside enemy territory.
“We’re not going to make it,” she said again. And Braddock knew what that meant.
The United States was gone.
Then…
“You’re our only hope now.” Silence. A pause. “So go with them.” She halted. Then, cold as ice, vengeance cold, she said the four last words that would define how Braddock, the last operator, the last weapon in the arsenal of a government that no longer existed, was to execute the mission without further instructions. The last orders he’d receive.
“Do whatever it takes.”
“I understand,” said Braddock after a moment, but she was already gone.
He smashed the cellphone, then threw it down into the marble lobby below where it disintegrated. He shouldered the ruck, ejected the magazine from the MP5, tapped the bullets rearward to cut down on jams, then reinserted it into the bottom of the compact assault rifle.
Do whatever it takes.
“Alpha Six, be advised, the target just blew the roadblock at 3rd and Broadway.” It was Downtown LA Tactical Command coming through on his earpiece. “Multiple hostiles in the vehicle. Proceeding north on 3rd toward HQ.”
“This is Alpha Six, on the move to intercept.”
“Six, you’ve got a large mob of Infected on the street to your west.”
“Roger that, Six out.”
Braddock was running. As fast as he could.
For twelve months they’d been trying to find out who was behind this bio attack. Nothing. Operators died or disappeared. That someone was recruiting ex-SF was clear. But who that someone was, no one had a clue. The only thing Intel knew was that there was a lot of chatter about something big going down, soon. Not just a nation ender, everything pointed toward something much bigger.
Ahead, the silhouettes of three Infected blocked the exit escalator back out onto the streets and downtown.
Puff, puff, puff.
Tangos down.
He flew down the still working escalator and hit the streets at a run. Outside, high above, helicopters were circling the roof of the tallest downtown building. The US Bank tower. A rising cylindrical column of a building that towered over the downtown skyscape. The West Coast emergency headquarters for Homeland.
The street was filled with the undead surging up toward the barricades at the entrance of the tower. There was no gunfire.
Downhill, Braddock saw the black SUV, bullet holes in its windows and paint, speeding up the street, clipping stray Infected as it went.
“This is Alpha Six, Target acquired. Engaging.”
There was no brilliant tactical plan. No trick device designed to stop a speeding executive high-end, and most likely armored, SUV transport. That it was armored and bulletproof was assumed. But bulletproof implied singular. A bullet. Not an entire magazine. Thirty .40 caliber hollow points.
With short bursts, Braddock put an entire magazine into the glass on the driver’s side windshield of the speeding black SUV. The hunk of metal swerved to the left and slammed into a storefront that was once an electronics outlet before it got looted a week ago. A burglar alarm began to blare.
Braddock crossed the street, drew his sidearm and drilled the goon he knew would be coming out of the passenger door, guns blazing. The guy was bleeding from a smashed face, but that didn’t stop him from trying to draw on Braddock who’d already pulled his 9mm. Braddock emptied the rest of the clip as he crossed the street. The bleeding-faced guy didn’t seem to want to go down until the last bullet, then he slithered out from the door and collapsed into a pile on the street.
Braddock ejected the empty clip, letting it fall to the street, aware that every Infected had just turned away from lumbering toward the US Bank tower and was now looking at him and the smashed store with its bleating security alarm and the SUV with its blaring horn.
A new clip in, he thumbed the release and sent the slide forward. He pulled the passenger door wide and fired at the driver who was already covered in blood and peppered with bullet holes. From the passenger door he could see someone, a woman in a black hijab in back. Braddock took two steps to the side and opened the rear
passenger door. She had a large metallic security suitcase open.
“Dirty bomb,” he thought, and blew her brains all over the tinted glass of the other passenger door window.
All around him, the moaning chorus of the Infected was rising above the bleating and the blaring next to him. He spun the case around and saw that all the arming circuits were in the green. It was a simple trigger. He’d seen it on IEDs back in the field. It wasn’t complex.
But it wasn’t just a homemade dirty bomb. He could see the Russian markings underneath all the new wiring. Old soviet military garbage.
Suitcase bomb. Maximum six kiloton yield.
He could smell the Infected closing in all about him as the sun beat down on the street and the smoking SUV.
He gently shut the case, leaving the arming circuits in the green. That was a trick insurgents liked to play. Braddock knew that once those circuits were armed there was no going back. Killing the switches now would just set it off.
He spent the last three bullets in his clip on three Infected front runners. Then he slipped a new clip in, holstered the 9mm, and grabbed a fresh mag for the MP5. Reloaded, he drew the pistol and grabbed the case with the other hand.
“Minimum three-hundred,” he mumbled to himself, mentally calculating the undead now shambling toward the wreck.
“Doghouse, this is Alpha Six. Target eliminated, package in hand.”
A moment later the net operator came back at him. “Proceed west at the bottom of the hill. Front entrance inaccessible at this time.”
Without hesitation Braddock jogged down the hill, saving his ammo for only the Infected that absolutely had to be taken out for him to move forward. The mob behind stumbled downhill after him. At the bottom of the hill, at the street corner, he turned right and headed west on Olive.
Olive was a warzone.
Tall buildings clustered along the street while hundreds of the recently dead beat at various doors or clustered around wrecked vehicles and shops. Black smoke poured from a few open windows where bed linens and curtains trailed away like barely moving sea grass beneath a hazy ocean.
“Doghouse, this is Alpha Six, where next?”
Already the undead were surging toward him. He aimed his 9mm and downed a bystander that was too close. The MP5 was useless as long as he had to carry the suitcase bomb.
“Doghouse, I’m surrounded…”
“This is Doghouse Actual,” said an older voice in Braddock’s earpiece. “Proceed west on Olive to the intersection of Olive and 5th.”
“Doghouse, this street is overrun and the package is a priority.”
Static.
Braddock started up Olive, veering to the far left of the street, crossing through forever frozen traffic jams as the Infected followed and moved to intercept him. He took another shot, and this time put the bullet in some guy’s chest. The thing continued on, clutching at him as it came.
No go, thought Braddock as the Infected thing-man got close. Sweat poured into Braddock’s eyes. His muscles were aching. He knew he was nearing a limit. But he shook that thought off as quickly as it appeared. He aimed again. Ranger School had taught him that limits were things just to be waved at in your rearview mirror as you blew past them. This time, the bullet smashed through the dead thing-man’s skull.
Static on the comm.
He climbed on top of a taxi and leaped off the other side, the large metallic suitcase trailing after him. A short distance of sidewalk opened up and Braddock sprinted forward, leaving the stumbling dead behind. Ahead, more of them gathered to close in on him.
“Alpha Six, be advised this is Doghouse Actual, we are sending in gunship support to assist your exfil. Putting you in contact with the air boss now.”
Static. Click.
“Alpha Six, this is Overlord,” said the air boss. The tactical air traffic controller who was probably organizing the evacuation flights off the US Bank tower and all the other air operations in the downtown area, thought Braddock. “Do you copy?”
“Five by five, Overlord,” said Braddock as he pushed an undead woman back from him, smashed her in the face with the butt of his pistol and dashed between two cars. The suitcase, the dirty nuclear bomb, banged on the trunk of one of the cars as he barely pulled past it.
Be careful, he growled at himself, you’re carrying a nuclear weapon.
“Understand we need to get you off that street, son?” said Overlord calmly. His voice wry and smoky.
The roof of a car exploded as one of the Infected, falling from a nearby rooftop, smashed into it. Windows exploded, showering one of Braddock’s arms with broken glass.
He stopped to gather his bearings, put three bullets into two Infected that were getting too close, and watched as zombies began to throw themselves at him off the rooftops above.
Braddock set the case down, ejected the clip, reached into his pack for a handful more and shoved them into his cargo pocket. Then he slapped a new one in and sent the slide forward.
“Little bird on station in thirty seconds, Alpha Six. Borrowed from the U.S.S. Reagan down at the Marina Del Rey evacuation point just for you. Standby for close air support.”
Braddock pushed himself up and over a sprawled silver Mercedes that had slammed into a blood-soaked Humvee, dragging the suitcase as he went. He landed, steadied himself, and kicked an Infected in the chest. It went tumbling backward, and he shot another one right through the bottom of its chin as it lunged forward at him. Rotting brains volcanoed out the top of its disintegrated skull. Now the undead were hitting the street all around him like wet sacks of cement as Braddock ran toward another mob that seemed to fill the entire street in front of him.
He was only halfway down Olive.
“Overlord, this is Gunfighter.” It was the AH-6 Little Bird pilot. “We have Alpha Six in sight, beginning attack run just beyond his position.”
Braddock turned and saw the agile black helicopter flying two stories up. He could see the mini-guns already spooling. He could see the pilot as the bird raced down the street above him. Her face was set and determined. That’s when he ducked.
The mini-guns whirred to life, chewing up the street and the massing undead further up Olive. Thousands of tiny lead balls slammed into everything and everyone. Sudden galvanized milk bucket notes joined wet pulpy slaps as undead and machines were riddled with thousands of hits at once. Braddock watched the chopper pass overhead and continue on up the narrow street. At a wide intersection farther up, he watched as the pilot pivoted the chopper on a dime, barely missing a traffic signal, and started back toward Braddock. Two door gunners hanging over the sides began to take out the remaining undead that were still mobile.
A body slammed into the sidewalk nearby.
Braddock looked up.
More of the Infected were throwing themselves off the rooftops and even out windows now.
“Gunfighter, watch your…” But that was all he got out. One of the Infected fell right into the rotating blades of the Little Bird, hitting it off center. The dead thing turned into sudden blood spray as most of it was sent off onto the side of a nearby building. A moment later, the bird slammed into the same building and burst into flames as it fell to the street. A second after that, it exploded, igniting the undead all around.
Braddock ran up the street, passing the burning helo on his left, legs pumping to make as much gain as possible while the bullet-riddled street was still wide open. Already, at the doors and side alleys, more undead were flooding back out onto the street as though there were an unending supply of them.
“Overlord, Gunfighter is down. Repeat, Gunfighter is down and the crew is dead. Do not send Search and Rescue.”
Braddock turned back to the downed chopper for one last look and watched as one of the crew members crawled from the wreck, on fire, while the undead mobbed him or her.
Chapter Fifteen
“Be advised Alpha Six, drone recon indicates you have multiple hostiles converging on your AO.”
Braddock ignored the inane status report of a drone-collected image observed on a computer monitor in a room somewhere safe. He could see for himself that he was surrounded. The intersection at Olive and 5th was swollen with the undead. Gunshots were coming from the second floor of an old building on the southwest corner.
Braddock climbed on top of an SUV, hauled the metallic suitcase up with him and set it down on the roof. He gasped at the hot air and its dead body putrescence. He wasn’t sweating and he knew that was bad. Behind him, the undead were filling the street again. The burning fuel from the smashed helo ignited them as they passed near it or even just walked through the flames to get to Braddock.
“Overlord, this is Alpha Six… I’m at the intersection of… 5th and Olive. Which way do I proceed?”
“We have you on drone recon, standby Alpha Six.”
Infected shambled, stumbled and lurched toward him, filling in the open spaces ahead, around and behind him like locusts. Braddock swapped clips for the 9mm.
“Overlord, I’m running out of options here.”
No answer.
Near the US Bank Tower, choppers were circling and making landings on the roof. Braddock had seen evacuations before and he knew he was watching one. They were leaving Downtown LA.
“Overlord,” he tried one last time. There was a small alley back down the street that headed north toward the tower. He was just about to go for it when Overlord came back.
