On the lower floors, zeds waited in several apartments. The SEALs were not taken by surprise. Every door had already been broken down, and the occupants had either been killed or managed to escape through the first floor windows. The men dispatched each zombie with care. There was no hesitation on the part of the SEALs, no fear, no anger, no disgust, just training and routine and almost mechanical responses. It was their job.
By the time they were done, Alcatraz 16 counted twenty-three dead zombies. He reported that to the Night Stalkers, who relayed the information to Cadillac. After making another circuit through the entire apartment building, they found no more stenches, only growing clouds of black flies. He led his element into the light of the waning afternoon and found that Sergeant Chavez had been replaced by a SWAT captain named Vasquez, who looked sharp and efficient in his black uniform and no-nonsense demeanor.
“I want to thank you guys for helping us out in this,” Vasquez said. “We were on another call across town, and it took some time for us to get here.”
“What call was that, sir?”
Vasquez nodded toward the bodies sprawled across the apartment building’s walkway. He didn’t need to say anything further. Alcatraz 16 looked into the sky. A news helicopter had joined the fray, hovering outside the AH-6s’ orbit, its gimbaled camera pointing in their direction. Alcatraz 16 turned his face away from it. He saw an ambulance had rolled up, and a uniformed policeman was being treated for a bite to his arm. The man’s face was a blank mask; he probably knew what was in store for him.
Alcatraz 16 pointed him out to Vasquez anyway. “Your problems are only just beginning.”
Vasquez nodded again. “I know. We’ve been lucky so far, but today, there’ve been two outbreaks. We haven’t been fast enough to contain them.”
“You want help, have your superiors contact mine. No promises, but as long as we have the guns, we can try and get things squared away with you guys.”
“That’d help. I’ll pass that along.” Vasquez hesitated. “What’s going on down at the plant? Big military presence there.” He looked up at the orbiting Little Birds. “Attack helicopters, Strykers, hundreds of troops… what’s the deal?”
“Classified.”
“Classified as what?”
“Classified as ‘you don’t need to know,’” Alcatraz 16 said. “Can I make it any clearer than that?”
Vasquez didn’t seem happy, but he was professional enough not to belabor the point. “Thanks, I’m good.”
“Call us if you need us. We have to get out of here now; choppers are running low on go-juice.” It had been almost an hour since the element had entered the apartment building, and the Night Stalkers would certainly have to head back shortly.
“Thanks again, man.”
“No problem.” Alcatraz 16 turned away and headed up the street, where the rest of the SEALs had already secured a landing zone for the MH-6 transports.
14
“Severed limbs are hazardous waste,” Anthony Lim heard a sergeant say as he walked past one of the troop fortifications. “You see something, you must bag it.”
“You think I’m going to touch a dead arm? You siao liao oreddy? Who do you think is going to touch something like that?”
Lim stopped in his tracks and turned in the darkness. “Who said that?”
Three men stood inside the sandbag revetment. Two of them turned, while the third continued looking at the shoreline through light-intensifying binoculars. The pair who faced him were barely more than shadows in the dim light; Admiralty Road West was completely dark, part of the plan after the causeway connecting Singapore with Malaysia’s Johor Bahru had been demolished just after sunset. All the government housing was dark as well; even though Singapore still had plenty of power, no one in the government wanted to advertise the fact.
Across the strait, Malaysia burned. And that was why the men had fallen suddenly silent. While he could see almost nothing of their features, the reflected firelight illuminated the subdued insignia on his battle dress, and the soldiers knew they were facing none other than the commanding officer of the 2nd Singapore Infantry Regiment. They saluted automatically, and called the third soldier to order. He turned and saluted immediately, silhouetted against the fiery maelstrom of Johor Bahru.
“I said it, sir. It was me.”
Lim stepped closer to the man. He was an older individual, with a creased, weathered face and the rank of staff sergeant, which made him probably one of the senior enlisted men in the area. Lim looked from him to the younger man standing next to him. While the staff sergeant was obviously Chinese, the younger man was probably of Malay extraction. He was a lance corporal, and he stiffened when Lim’s gaze locked with his.
“You said it,” Lim said.
“Yes, sir, I said it. I’m sorry, sir,” the lance corporal admitted.
Lim waved the apology away. “It doesn’t matter. But you must listen to your superiors—anything that washes ashore should be considered hazardous, and it must be contained. This is something that all of us must take care of, from the most senior to the most junior.”
“Yes, Colonel. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do as ordered.”
Lim nodded toward the dark waters of the strait. “Return to your duties.”
“Sir.” The soldier turned and raised the binoculars to his eyes and resumed inspecting the water.
Lim turned back to the staff sergeant. “Staff, are we secure in this position?”
It had been hours since the causeways had been destroyed, and Lim was worried about the amount of zombies massing on the far shores of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur was full of the walking dead, having fallen earlier in the day. Lim’s darkest fear was that his own Singapore would follow suit. But the citizens of Singapore were vigilant; whenever a zombie rose, it was put down, either by officials or by citizens wielding machetes and clubs. Those individuals who had been bitten were quarantined and relocated to the Woodlands Civic Center, where they were kept under lock and key. A thousand troops had been moved into the area surrounding the civic center; most were Guards, the elite special operations force of the Singapore Armed Forces. Lim had no doubt that anyone who went into the civic center was going to die, and the Guards would ensure the infected were terminated by a bullet to the brain.
All of the city-state’s 350,000 service members had been mobilized, along with the island’s sophisticated emergency management troops. Most of the force was comprised of conscripts, but over the past few days, citizens of every age had volunteered for service. There weren’t enough weapons to go around, and there was no time to train everyone even if there were. Thankfully, Singapore had a healthy population of foreign expatriates, many of whom had formal military training. Lim had been surprised to find they were also eager to pitch in and help, and in fact, he had in his service several Europeans and Americans who were recent veterans of the conflicts in the Middle East. Just down the road, a former British SAS commando assisted in overseeing a heavy machinegun emplacement, and an American former Marine was advising one of Lim’s counterparts with the 1st Singapore Infantry Regiment. Norwegians and Germans with the Singapore Navy were lending their own expertise to the littoral operations. The Singapore Strait was full of Navy vessels patrolling the calm waters, looking for any sign of zombies. Fairly often, gunfire crackled in the night as sailors aboard those ships fired on things in the water.
“We are secure right now, sir. An entire company is oriented in defense in that direction—” The older noncom pointed to the left of the emplacement. “—and we have a separate company in that direction. But you already know all of this.” The staff sergeant adjusted his helmet. “Colonel, where is your escort?”
“I’m alone for the moment, Staff Sergeant…?”
“Chee, sir.”
“I’m doing an informal inspection, Staff Chee. No need to have an escort. I’m among friends, and the entire second regiment is within shouting distance.”
“I see, sir. Where are you off to n
ext?”
Lim pointed up the coastline. “I intend to work my way to the docks to the north, then come back down.”
“I’ll accompany you, sir.”
“Completely unnecessary, Staff.”
“Completely necessary, Colonel. You can’t be alone out here, not with those… those things in the area.”
Gunfire rang out, and Lim looked across the dark strait. He saw muzzle flashes wink from one of the patrol boats, but there was something odd about it, something that didn’t quite make sense. He figured it out when he stepped toward the line of sand bags and reached for the night vision goggles attached to his helmet. The sailors on the patrol vessel weren’t firing at the water; they were firing at something aboard the boat itself.
“Staff!” The soldier holding the binoculars cried. “On the shoreline!”
The staff sergeant grunted as he stepped up beside the soldier. He switched on his NVGs and swung them in position over his eyes just as Lim did the same. What Lim saw almost made his heart come to a complete stop.
Thousands of the walking dead emerged from the water, sodden clothes clinging to their bodies. From well-heeled Malaysian businessmen to fashionable women to lowly ah beng boys and ah lian girls, the dead stumbled toward the shore. Many were horribly burned or gruesomely savaged, missing limbs or even disemboweled. One grotesquerie had been a pregnant woman who had apparently torn open her own belly to get at her unborn child.
“Sir, orders?” The staff sergeant’s voice was flat, expressionless.
“Close and destroy,” Lim said. He spoke into his headset and informed the combined tactical operations center located at the Marsiling Secondary School two miles away what was occurring. As he did so, the shoreline emplacements opened fire. All up and down the coast, machine guns and assault rifles spoke, including the 7.62 millimeter M240E6 Squad Automatic Weapon in the sandbagged position he stood in. The lance corporal squeezed off tight bursts, peering through the M145 scope attached to the weapon. The staff sergeant shouted orders to the men arrayed around the emplacement, and a dozen soldiers got to their feet, shouldering their SAR-21A assault rifles. Laser light flashed across the beach as target designators were switched on.
“Aim for their heads!” Lim shouted. “Remember, hit them in the heads!”
The staff sergeant relayed the order up the line in a harsh bellow, and more soldiers continued passing the order. A junior officer appeared and led one element of infantrymen forward as floodlights came to life, casting a glowing pool across one section of the narrow beach. The floodlights had been Lim’s idea, intended to give the approaching zeds something to focus on while serving as a chokepoint. He hoped to bring all the ghouls into one area so they could be serviced by soldiers on either side of the illumination point. He was satisfied to see the tactic worked; the zombies shambled toward the radiant light, where they were put down by the soldiers.
What Lim hadn’t counted on was that thousands of zombies would put ashore at almost the same time. Before he knew it, ghouls had penetrated the line, sensing the warm bodies of the soldiers beyond the blinding glare of the lights. Soon, dozens of carnivorous corpses stalked along Admiralty Road. An Army truck slammed through a gaggle of the dead, sending broken bodies flying through the air. Those bodies continued to move, to press on with the hunt, despite shattered limbs and bones. Lim pulled his own assault rifle into position against his right shoulder and gunned down several zombies, then assisted the lance corporal with reloading his belt-fed machinegun. Over the regiment’s tactical net, he heard fragmented reports coming from the various units that made up the 2nd Singapore Infantry Regiment. Nearly every unit was in varying degrees of contact, even those on the far side of Admiralty Road. Overhead, rotors clattered as OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance helicopters surveyed the area. On the water, gunfire from the patrol boats continued.
“Colonel!”
Lim fired at another zombie as it lurched through the night, then turned. Captain Horace Teo stood at the entrance to the emplacement, his rifle held at port arms. Behind him was an unarmed Humvee. The vehicle idled on the side of the road, its driver standing near the front fender, rifle at the ready, night vision goggles over his eyes.
“Teo! What are you doing here?”
“Colonel, they’ve been calling you on the tactical net! You need to come back to the operations center. The zombies are coming over from Lim Chu Kang in incredible numbers!”
“Lim Chu Kang…” Lim thought quickly, trying to remember the divisional deployment. “That’s where the Fifth Infantry is located. It’s not our area of responsibility.”
“Sir, you don’t understand.” Teo pointed over Lim’s shoulder, in the direction of Lim Chu Kang, a nearby district known for its wetland preserves and Singapore’s only military live fire area.
Lim turned. A huge glow illuminated the near horizon, mimicking that across the strait in Malaysia. A tremendous fire had broken out. When did that happen?
“The Fifth has been overrun,” Teo continued. “Estimates of twenty to forty thousand zombies have emerged from the water. They’re headed this way.”
Overhead, something shrieked past, first one, then another, and another. Brilliant explosions flashed, and the shockwaves seemed to hit Lim right in the chest. An airstrike, or perhaps artillery barrage, had just hit what he presumed to be the edge of the zombie element.
“We have to keep this beach secure!” Lim pointed at the zombies that continued to shamble up the beach, walking toward the lights. The bodies were already three feet high, and more gunfire raged from the darkness behind them. Men screamed in the distance, and Lim saw a soldier go down beneath a gaggle of hungry corpses. “You see what’s going on? If we redeploy now, this area will become porous, and they’ll be able to walk right down Admiralty to the Central Business District, eating everything in their way!”
“But General Singh has—”
“Is he here?” Lim waved around the area. “Do you see the general anywhere near this beach? Go back to the TOC and tell that patrician fool I’m staying with my regiment. The People’s Defense Force is being held in reserve. My advice to him is to give them weapons, and let them loose!”
“But Colonel!”
Lim looked at Teo with hard eyes. He had always gotten along well with Teo, but it was their first time serving together under combat conditions. Lim saw the younger officer’s fear, could sense it eroding his competence. Perhaps it was the type of combat. No soldier in the world had trained to fight legions of the walking dead, an enemy incredibly difficult to kill, an enemy whose response to debilitating injury was merely to keep attacking. If that was the cause for Teo’s reluctance to return to the tactical operations center and inform the general overseeing them that the regimental commander had elected to remain with his troops, then Lim could perhaps understand it.
“When you’re done with that, return here and assist with combat operations,” Lim continued. “I expect you to report back smartly. Your job will be to oversee containment operations in our rear.” He pointed into the darkness behind them, where muzzle flashes occasionally lit the area. The necromorphs were penetrating the Regiment’s line, and secondary defensive positions were engaging them.
Teo turned and looked into the darkness, then faced Lim and saluted sharply. “Sir!”
Lim returned the salute, and Teo spun and ran back to his waiting vehicle.
Lim grabbed the senior sergeant in the firing position and spoke into his ear over the crackle of weapons fire. “Order your men into a skirmish line on the beach. We need to start killing the dead on the sand. Machinegunners will provide grazing fire and protective cover. Instruct your men to practice ammunition conservation. If they can’t kill with one shot, they are to withhold fire until the proper opportunity presents itself. One shot, one kill, Staff. We are literally facing millions of dead. We must be disciplined!”
“Agreed, Colonel. I’ll notify every company commander in the area and arrange the soldiers
under my control into the element you ordered. You might want to consider getting on the radio and broadcasting that to the rest of the regiment, sir.” The older man pointed to the tactical radio set up nearby.
Lim went over to the radio and snatched up the microphone. Broadcasting a Selarang Six—the call sign of the regimental commander—he relayed the same orders he had given the sergeant. Diesel engines roared, and he turned to see Singaporean Bionix II infantry fighting vehicles roll up. The vehicles lowered their boarding ramps, and more soldiers dashed out into the night, clutching rifles, night vision goggles down across their eyes. Over the roar of the machinegun to his left, Lim shouted for the infantrymen to get down to the beach and organize themselves.
The troops did as ordered without hesitation. Under the urgings of their senior noncommissioned officers, the soldiers raced past the sandbagged fortifications, killing the dead as they advanced. They organized themselves into a line on the beach, standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder. In less than a minute, over four hundred soldiers engaged the tide of the walking dead that shambled up the small beach.
Overhead, OH-58D helicopters dove toward the black water, firing .50 caliber machineguns into the strait. Lim surmised the pilots were able to see the dead in the water courtesy of the sensitive infrared components in each aircraft’s mast-mounted sight. Occasionally, the helicopters would unleash a rocket, sending a thunderclap of fire and fury through the darkness. Further out, the patrol boats lit up the strait with their own fires.
Lim shouldered his SAR-21 and fired at the mass of wet bodies emerging from the surf. When he had told the sergeant the regiment would be facing millions of dead, he hadn’t been wrong. Thousands of bodies rose from the black waters, climbing over rock and hard-packed sand, their waterlogged clothes clinging to their pale bodies like a second skin. Lim saw men, women, children, soldiers, nurses, doctors, teachers, and laborers. Lim knew he was witnessing the demise of Malaysia, and the thought of the same thing waiting for Singapore chilled him to the very bone. In the back of his mind, he worried about his wife and two sons, currently barricaded in their home in Holland Village. If he and his regiment fell, would his family be able to survive as the dead surged into Singapore like a tsunami of death? And even if they did survive the initial onslaught, who would come to their rescue? Malaysia and Indonesia were gone, and Australia was fighting the dead as well. Who would care about tiny, insignificant Singapore?
The Rising Horde, Volume One Page 18
