The Chinook thundered past again, so low that its rotor wash tore through the area like a hurricane, its own .50 caliber pounding down on the zeds. Several ghouls fell to the ground, flopping about, suffering incredible damage that would absolutely have killed any normal soldier. But the dead rose again to press on with the hunt. Royko opened fire, sighting on his targets through his rifle’s scope, popping off round after round. He hit his targets in the head more often than not.
So many of them. So many of them, so few of us…
The machinegun on the rearmost Humvee ran dry, and the soldier manning it frantically wrestled with a new box of ammo as he tried to reload. Royko ordered the other soldiers to give him cover, but there was nothing they could do. The dead swarmed over the back of the Humvee and engulfed it beneath a tsunami of rotting flesh.
Royko sensed movement to his right, and he took a step back and looked at the Humvee beside him. The ghouls were on the other side of the vehicle, and the soldier standing in the back, manning the Mk 119, couldn’t see them. The Humvee’s doors stood ajar, and one of the ghouls shoved itself through the driver’s side rear door. Royko shouted a warning and fired at the stench, hitting it in the shoulder. Its left arm flopped and hung limp, but the zed ignored the damage and latched onto one of the soldier’s legs with its right hand. As the soldier shouted and kicked, the zombie bit into his calf. The soldier screamed and, for a moment, allowed the still-firing Mk 119’s barrel to drop. He fired three grenades into the hood of the Humvee behind him, and the triplet of explosions tore the vehicle open and ripped through the idling engine beneath the hood. Diesel fuel caught fire as shrapnel pelted the rest of the soldiers, bringing them to their knees.
Royko fired at the zed in the Humvee twice more and finally killed it with a headshot. The soldier manning the Mk 119 let out a tortured cry—he’d been bitten, and he knew what lay in store for him—but he recovered his command of his weapon and resumed firing at the wall of gathering dead.
“Keep firing!” Royko told the rest of the men. His voice sounded shrill and loud in his own ears. “Get up. Keep firing!” He ran toward the Humvee and jumped inside as another ghoul appeared in the open doorway. He shot it through the face, shoved the corpse away from the vehicle, and slammed the rear passenger door. He reached around the front seat and pulled the driver’s door closed. The fire from his troops had become erratic, unfocused.
“Keep firing!” he repeated, to the trooper manning the Mk 119 and any others who might be able to hear him. Royko pulled himself out of the Humvee and shut the door behind him.
Two of the soldiers were down, bleeding badly from shrapnel wounds, and the others had pulled away from the burning Humvee. The flames burned so hot and bright that they overwhelmed Royko’s night vision goggles. One of the downed soldiers rolled over onto his side—the master sergeant still held onto his weapon, and his gaze fell upon Royko.
“Colonel, get that man out of here!” he shouted, pointing at the soldier who lay beside him. He pulled himself into a sitting position and gunned down a charging stench, a dark shape silhouetted against the billowing yellow flame rising from the stricken Humvee.
Royko darted forward and grabbed the back of the soldier’s body armor. He pulled the man away from the burning wreck. “Troops, fall back! Fall back!”
The Mk 119 gunner tried to haul himself out of the Humvee. He never made it. Several shapes mounted the vehicle and pulled the soldier toward the street. He screamed and disappeared from view.
Then the burning Humvee exploded.
Royko came to a moment later, ears ringing, uniform and body armor smoldering. His M4 was trapped beneath him, and he rolled to one side, freeing it. The flaming wreck of the M1114 HMMWV generated an amazing amount of heat, and the vehicles behind and in front of the destroyed M1114 were aflame as well. Royko reached for his night vision goggles, but they had been shorn from their plastic mount and were nowhere to be found. The soldier he had been dragging away from the maelstrom groaned and slowly rolled onto his back. Royko knelt beside him and zeroed two stenches staggering to his position. Royko heard screaming from the other side of the wall of flames, followed by full automatic gunfire.
“Soldier, get on your feet! Sergeant Wilkins, get on your feet!” he screamed at the wounded soldier. Behind him, the last remaining .50 caliber machinegun suddenly fell silent, and Royko turned to see the Humvee covered with the walking dead as they fought to get to the lone soldier inside it.
God, where did they all come from?
Wilkins reached up and grabbed Royko’s arm; his grip was slack and weak. Royko dropped another zed that came around one of the burning Humvees, then reached down with his left hand and grabbed Wilkins’s wrist. He hauled the sergeant to his feet. “Come on.”
Wilkins screeched and grabbed Royko in a bear hug, his dead eyes gleaming in the firelight. The newest zed hugged Royko and tried to bite him in the neck, but Royko shifted at the last moment, and the ghoul sank its teeth into the fabric covering his body armor. Royko yelled and tried to break the zombie’s grip, but something crashed into him from behind, driving him to the ground. Royko screamed and fired his M4 into Wilkins’s legs, but the zombie didn’t even notice. As another zombie landed on him, followed by another and another, Royko reached for one of the fragmentation grenades clipped to his body armor. Before he could pull the pin, the Wilkins zombie found the soft flesh of his neck, and Royko’s last thought was that he had never felt anything so painful in his life.
5
Wheels down in Texas.
McDaniels had been awake for the entire flight to Odessa Midland International Airport. He looked through the window at the black landscape of western Texas, and what he saw seemed to be a reflection of his own bleary state of mind: dark nothingness, broken here and there by a shining light or two.
Jaworski stirred, stretched, and yawned. He had awoken only briefly during the trip, when the Lear had set down to refuel. He had fallen back to sleep before the plane had finished its landing roll and remained that way throughout the refueling operation and the following takeoff. He rubbed his eyes and looked at McDaniels. “Sleep well?”
McDaniels grunted. Now I know why the zoomies always look so rested and refreshed all the time.
Behind them, Gartrell stirred and started checking his pack and other gear. “So what’s the op once the door opens, sirs?”
“Well, I figured we’d take a moment to defuel our bladders, see if there’s any chow available, and then catch transportation to SPARTA. There’s supposed to be a van or something waiting for us.” Jaworski looked over his shoulder at Gartrell. “Already leaning forward and raring to go, eh, Sergeant Major?”
“The sooner we accomplish our mission, the sooner all of this is over, sir.” There wasn’t any hostility in Gartrell’s voice, but it wasn’t full of warm fuzzies, either.
Jaworski shrugged and faced forward. “I like that you have your priorities straight, Sarmajor.”
“He always has,” McDaniels said.
The jet came to a halt at the taxiway ramp, and its engines spooled down.
“I’ve got the door,” Jaworski told the pilots, and he unfastened his seat belt and duck-walked to the plane’s closed Dutch door.
“Thanks, sir,” one of the pilots said as he looked back into the jet’s narrow cabin. He appeared to be momentarily put out, and McDaniels presumed it was unusual for a superior officer to be doing that kind of work.
“No problem, and thanks for the lift.” Jaworski opened the door, and it split horizontally across the middle, with the lower half forming a brief stairway to the tarmac, while the upper half acted as a weather shield. Jaworski put on his garrison cap, grabbed a flight bag, and stepped out.
McDaniels and Gartrell followed more slowly. The aisle between the seats would have been tight for a six-year-old, and for two grown men wearing weapons and gear, it was a bit of a challenge. McDaniels found the air outside the aircraft decidedly less humid than it had been in
either Virginia or New York, and he was grateful for it. The breeze was a bit chilly, but he was relieved to be standing outside after spending hours cooped up in the C-21.
“All right.” Jaworski pointed at a soldier in BDUs waving at them from the door of a nearby FBO. “Looks like our ride is here. Let’s get the show on the road.”
They followed him across the tarmac and found the soldier was from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He had a van parked at the curb in front of the FBO, and he led them directly to it after the men had hit the latrine. The van was a rental, and while it was decidedly no-frills, the interior was more luxurious than the rather workmanlike appointments about the C-21. Jaworski took the front passenger seat, and McDaniels half-expected him to fall asleep again as he and Gartrell loaded onto the rear bench seat.
Surprisingly, the Air Force officer managed to stay awake. “So where are we headed?” he asked the driver as the sergeant started the van and backed away from the curb.
“Direct to SPARTA, sir. There’s already quarters provisioned, and a headquarters element has already been erected. It’s, uh, kind of rustic right now, and things are still moving along, but—”
“Not a problem, son. I know I’m Air Force, but I wasn’t expecting a Holiday Inn.” Jaworski paused, then added, “Though that would have been nice.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Sergeant, have any other forces arrived yet?” McDaniels asked.
“I don’t think so, sir. Only a few of us from the regiment are there, as the advance team. When I left to pick you up, the Rangers were still a couple of hours out. They’ll be coming in to the same airport, but they’re bringing their own transportation. We have some Humvees and tractor-trailers and some Strykers, but that’s it for the moment.”
“Well, at least we didn’t get tossed into a Stryker,” Gartrell said.
“Oh no, Sarmajor. We wouldn’t send one of those for the task force commander and senior staff,” the driver said.
“I know that, Sergeant. Was just busting your stones a bit.”
“Yes, Sarmajor.”
“Who’s the officer in charge of SPARTA right now?” Jaworski asked. “And how are we getting along with the civilians?”
“Captain Chase is temporarily in charge of the troops at SPARTA, sir. And if you don’t mind me saying so, the civvies are a pain in the ass. The Corps of Engineers is already tearing apart their campus, so I guess they have a reason to bitch, but you know…” The driver shrugged. “Anyways, Captain Chase can brief you once we get there. Should be in about thirty minutes. This place is kind of remote, but it’s all highway, so it’s not too bad.”
“Well, every place in Texas is about a day apart, as they say,” Jaworski said. “So tell me, why are there engineers tearing up the civilian campus?”
“To build defenses, sir. Right now, they’re leveling everything out.”
“Okay, I can live with that. So thirty minutes, right?”
“Yes, sir, about thirty minutes.” The sergeant guided the van onto Interstate 20.
They headed westbound, toward Odessa. The only other traffic sharing the freeway with them were the long-haul trucks that bolted up and down the interstate.
Guess zed hasn’t made it here yet, McDaniels thought.
“Well, wake me in twenty-five, if you don’t mind.” Jaworski closed his eyes and went to sleep.
McDaniels finally nodded off as well.
***
“Here we are, sirs.”
McDaniels snapped awake as the van slowed and bumped over what felt like a curb. He sat up in his seat while Jaworski roused himself in front. Light poured into the van, and McDaniels blinked against its intensity. The van approached a guard post consisting of three Humvees, one Stryker, and several soldiers who manned what seemed to be a portable metal barricade that was stretched between two of the Humvees. Above them, halogen floodlights gleamed. Behind the Humvees, a generator was encircled by a ring of sand bags. A spider web of cables connected it to the pole-mounted floodlights. The driver slowed, and after a quick discourse with one of the sentries, he passed through the checkpoint. The van pulled into a large office park, one of those rambling kind of places surrounded by a sea of cement parking lots broken up by pools of landscaped greenery. McDaniels wondered how much water was wasted on the shrubbery, since the office park was located in the middle of the Texas desert.
A collection of trailers and temporary shelters had been erected in one parking lot, near the entrance to the park’s main building. Construction equipment was everywhere, a lot of it still in use under the harsh glare of more generator-powered lights. Backhoes and bulldozers were digging trenches all along the office park’s perimeter, decimating probably several hundred thousand dollars worth of high-end landscaping in the process. A pall of dust hung in the air, and the cacophony of controlled pandemonium reached McDaniels’s ears through the van’s closed windows. No wonder the civilians in charge of the office park were pissed.
The van stopped in front of the complex. McDaniels and the others got out, and Jaworski looked around as he straightened his garrison cap.
“Well, it looks like it used to be a nice place,” he said.
“Top-notch,” McDaniels agreed. “Looks like Uncle Sam is going to have to pay through the nose to restore it once this is all over.”
“Here’s hoping, because the alternative isn’t looking so hot.”
McDaniels smiled. “Yes, sir, I guess you’re right about that.”
They followed the driver toward a collection of temporary shelters. A pair of semi-truck trailers stood in the center of the shelters. The trailers were studded with antennae and had dedicated diesel generators hooked up to them. The printed sign on one of the trailers told McDaniels all he needed to know.
TOC SPARTA
RESTRICTED ACCESS
“This is the temporary tactical operations center, sir,” the driver said. “Trailer one is for command staff; trailer two is for support.”
“Great.” Jaworski mounted the temporary wooden stairway that led to the closed door in the side of trailer one and pulled it open.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” McDaniels told the driver.
“Sure thing, sir.”
McDaniels returned the soldier’s salute and mounted the stairs. Jaworski held the door for him and Gartrell. One side of the trailer was loaded with electronic equipment, mostly radios and small computer workstations. Only two people were inside, one enlisted man and one gigantic soldier who likely smacked his head every time he passed through the door. Both men looked over at them as they entered. The enlisted man rose from his chair and saluted, and the taller man mirrored the action.
Jaworski returned their salutes. “You must be Captain Chase?” he said to the tall man. “I’m Stas Jaworski, Leonidas Six.”
“Pleasure to meet you, sir. Captain Larry Chase, 66th Military Intelligence Company.” Chase extended his huge hand, and Jaworski shook it.
“Ghostriders, right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Fantastic. This is Lieutenant Colonel Cordell McDaniels and Sergeant Major David Gartrell. McDaniels will be heading up Hercules; Gartrell will be the QRF senior NCO.”
“Great. Colonel, Sarmajor.” Chase shook their hands and motioned to the enlisted man beside him. “This is Corporal Wang, one of our ELINT guys. I’ve got another twelve troops assigned to me, but they’re off until zero six hundred. Have you gentlemen been set up with quarters yet, sir?”
“We have not, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Can you give us a rundown on what’s been going on for the past few hours, or is it too early for that?”
Chase turned and motioned to one of the monitors on the wall. CNN was tuned in, and the talking head featured there looked tense and drawn. The news ticker scrawling across the bottom of the screen was full of updates regarding the spread of stenches along the east coast. McDaniels wasn’t surprised to see that one of the bits read, “President ev
acuated from White House.”
“Not much to tell you, sir. We only received our deployment orders less than twenty-four hours ago. We’re still setting up, and most of the units that are supposed to join us aren’t on-station yet,” Chase said.
“Tell us what you’ve got, then.”
“Sure thing. We arrived on-station yesterday morning. We already have a team standing by with everything ready to go, what we call a silver bullet unit. It’s configured for rapid OCONUS deployment, so pushing it out into the same state was no big deal. My unit, the 66th, was only a small presence, but we plussed it up with several staff members and brought along some extra gear—encrypted radios, terminals that can receive unmanned aerial system telemetry and images, that kind of stuff. Everything else was provided by the Cav regiment. We motored down here and set up after a bit of a pushing match with the civilians, but they let us position our gear where we wanted in the end.”
“What was the problem?” McDaniels asked. “They didn’t know you were coming?”
“Oh no, sir, they knew. They just wanted to keep this parking lot open for their employees. Once we made it clear to them that this facility is about to be completely militarized, I guess they figured out it was probably wise to listen to the guys with the guns.”
Jaworski sighed heavily. “Captain, you do realize we need these people, right?”
“I’m told that we need them, sir, but I had a mission to complete, and that was to get SPARTA’s initial presence up and operational. I did try to negotiate a settlement, but the folks here wanted it their way one hundred percent, and I just couldn’t give them that.”
“All right. Go on.”
“The first elements of the Corps of Engineers arrived yesterday afternoon. Between them and myself, we hammered out a rough idea of how SPARTA would form up—nothing too fancy, we decided to keep everything in a grid pattern. That way, the layout is nice and logical, with straight avenues of approach. The big thing was keeping it secure. We’re still working on that one. Doesn’t look like these zombie things are very impressed by firepower, and the only thing that kills them is a shot to the head. Is that right?”
The Rising Horde, Volume One Page 7
