by Turner, Ivan
It had been eight minutes since her teams had gone inside the first stores of the shopping center. There were twelve storefronts in all and she had been reticent to divide up her people to cover them all at once. Instead, she'd used four squads. She placed one on each end and two in the middle. The plan was to go from store to store, checking every crevice as they worked towards each other. A number of the stores had basements which needed to be checked. She had estimated five minutes per store. Her estimate, clearly, had been way off.
"Parrish," came the voice of Chucks over the radio. Chucks had taken his squad into one of the middle stores.
"Here."
"No zombies. But they've been doing work down here in the basement, knocking through the walls. We've met up with Herrick and her crew."
Parrish acknowledged, thinking it through a bit. So they'd been planning to connect all of the stores through their basements. It made sense.
"Continue your sweeps as planned. Try to ascertain how far they got with their work."
By the end of it, they determined that four stores were connected in the middle and two on each end. They found tools and materials in the last of the finished basements, but no people and no zombies. The information for that location had been correct as well. Parrish had lucked out.
***
Naughton had assigned Henry to one of the locations that was supposed to be abandoned, and yet it was the scariest one of all. On the upper west side of Manhattan, there was an underground parking garage that had been on Mikael Seaver's list. Several weeks before, the garage had ceased operations. From what the department had been able to dig up, the owners of the garage had basically given it up for sale. The new owners shut it down and sealed it up with security shutters. It made sense to use such a structure as a zombie safe house. After all, there was plenty of space for them to wander around. It was dark and it was underground. That made it safe for both the creatures within and the people without.
Henry wondered why they hadn't filled it. He supposed they hadn't had the time or the opportunity. It would hold twice whatever the other buildings held. In fact, he was surprised that there weren't more of them on the list.
He sent in one double squad of officers. There were sixteen men and women in full gear with weapons and blazing flood lights. In addition, he ordered additional people into the structure as relays for radio signals. He didn't know how far down the initial squad could go before contact was lost but he wasn't taking any chances. Let him be wrong. Let the place be empty and let the radios work fine. Hell, he'd pay all of the extra people himself if he had to.
"Main level's clear," Rollins reported over the mic. "We're proceeding down."
Henry swallowed hard but didn't say anything. They'd cordoned off the whole block, evacuating the giant warehouse next door, the building on top of the garage, and the small Starbucks on the corner.
The manager of Starbucks had been pissed.
"There's no power down here," Rollins said. "Our lights are adequate. No cars and no people. I smell something, though."
"Is it them?" Henry asked, sweat beginning to bead on his brow.
There was a pause, some chatter over the channel. Then Rollins came back. "It's tough to tell through the mask. It could just be damp…mold."
From his position outside the car park, Henry could see buildings and grey sky and snow. He could smell the snow. He couldn't smell what Rollins smelled. He couldn't imagine the darkness. He shivered.
***
Rollins halted his team midway through the structure. He'd heard something. The light they were using pooled around them like a protective aura. It lit up the immediate area like day, but faded quickly in the distance. A few feet away, all they could see was shadows. A few feet after that was blackness. Rollins was a tough guy with six years of dangerous duty behind him. He was a good shot and had a good head on his shoulders. Working with the zombie task force had been nothing like he'd ever imagined. They had spent weeks responding to false alarms until being summoned to a church in Queens. Then he had seen zombies. Then he had understood. They were so slow and so stupid. They were even predictable. And yet they held a power that was undeniable. They attacked a person psychologically. Even the most level headed person would rather kill himself than become one of those things. It wasn't the gore. Not really. In fact, most of the zombies that Rollins had seen weren't badly damaged. But the simple fact that they were human remains walking around and attacking people was more than most people could handle.
Hu tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Someone was approaching. The footsteps rapped an easy rhythm along the floor. Whoever it was, he didn't sound dead. In fact, as his shadow came into view, Rollins would swear he was carrying something.
As he signaled for the lights to be brought forward, Rollins said, "We're police officers. Please identify…"
The man was not alive. He was a parking attendant and he was carrying something. It was the arm of another person. He did seem to be a bit steadier than your average zombie, but he was a zombie just the same.
"Rollins," Gulliver called out. "Behind us."
"Lights!" he shouted and the lights went back to their original position. "How the hell?!"
Behind them were dozens of zombies, all hovering just out of range of the lights. Rollins couldn't even begin to sort out how they'd all managed to sneak up on a well trained, well equipped squad of police officers. And from behind, no less. Some of them were gripping beams of wood or old metal piping, but not holding them high as weapons. They seemed to react briefly to the light being played on them, but it was short lived. Soon they began their advance.
So much for the place being empty.
"Form a circle!" Rollins shouted. "Fire at will."
If this was all there was, they might have enough talent and enough bullets to withstand the onslaught. If this was all there was. As the gunfire erupted through the structure, he caught a glimpse of the entrance to the next level down. A wave of rotting humanity was coming up the ramp. He muttered a curse. It was the last thing Henry heard over the radio before the silence.
***
Baches led his own squad into the abandoned school building in Harlem. How the hell the ZRA had managed to smuggle a population of the undead into a school building left him baffled. Okay, it was abandoned, but really! It was a city owned building. Unless the city officials were in on it. That was a possibility, he supposed. Abandoned or now, someone had to be in charge of the real estate and there was no reason why that someone couldn’t be associated with the ZRA.
But those were thoughts for another time. Right now, that building was going down. The demolitions team had spent the wee hours of the morning pouring over the blueprints and determining just exactly where they needed to plant their explosives in order to bring down the entire structure. Baches was actually surprised at the small number of places. They didn’t need to take out all of the load bearing beams. Just a few key ones would put so much stress on the structure that it would fold.
His job was to make sure that they got in, did their job, and got out safely. He’d picked twenty three of his toughest men for the operation. Many of them were ex-military or military reserves. They had experience with going into hot zones. They were all men who craved danger. Getting in and down to the necessary areas would be no problem. The issue would be getting out. He’d considered requesting more men so that he could pepper the corridors with guards, leave a trail of breadcrumbs so to speak. But even before making the request he knew that it wasn’t going to happen. They could flood him with people to cover the outside, but there just weren’t enough people trained to go inside. Most of the officers joining him at the site of the school had never seen a zombie close up before. He knew from experience that that first encounter was a difficult one.
Cutting the chain on a padlocked side door, they entered the building weapons first. They were cautious, checking their blind spots and flooding the corridor with light. A zombie at the end of the hal
lway turned at the sight of them and started to approach. It was in pretty bad shape, with patches of skin peeling off of its hands and arms. There were tattoos on those arms and the peeling skin made it seem as if they were weeping. The mohawk that had once stood tall and proud stuck to the side of its head like a bad comb over. There were some rattling chains on its sleeveless shirt. Baches was in the lead and saw it first. This was exactly the kind of freak that had always made him wish for the days of greased back hair and cuffed blue jeans. Now he’d give anything to see the freak as a human being instead of, well, a monster. He actually felt sorry for the poor kid. Not wanting to make any noise, he pulled out the knife at his pocket. Without hesitation, he went forward and dispatched it. Waiting, he listened for any sign of others. When there was none, he signaled to his point man and the others spilled into the school.
The darkness pressed in on them as they moved toward the stairwell. They’d been briefed by the behaviorist at Arthur Conroy before beginning the mission. It was his contention that the zombies would likely be concentrated in one area unless the ZRA people had intentionally split them up. Inside the abandoned building, there would be little reason for them to move about. The only food source would be rats and insects, which would likely be found in the basement and subbasement. The zombies could easily manipulate the swinging doors on the staircases and it was likely that some of those doors had either been removed or fallen off of their hinges, giving the undead easy access to the stairwells. Stairs, on the other hand, might be difficult for them to manipulate. Tests had proven that only a handful of them could negotiate stairs on the first try. They either crawled up or fell down. If they broke bones on the way down, they might be piled up at the bottom.
This is exactly what they encountered in their first stairwell. There were eight of them at the bottom of the stairs, a combination of middle aged businessmen and women, kids in jeans and T-shirts, and one nurse in scrubs. They were tangled up at the foot of the stairs like the players in a game of Twister gone horribly wrong. As Baches and three others stepped in, they became excited, trying to work their ways out of the mess and toward the food. Baches’ point man leveled his rifle, but Baches put out a steadying hand. If they completed their mission properly, then these poor devils would have their peace. But for now, he wasn’t going to waste the ammunition and risk discovery. They left the group there thinking that this was what the Zombie Rights Association considered humane.
Stupid bastards.
The next staircase was clear at their end. They moved down into the dark basement, covering both the front and the rear. The demolitions people stayed in the middle of the group. At the bottom of the stairs, they found two more zombies just standing around. When the lights hit them, they reacted much like the first one. They were initially startled and then began to try to take the stairs. One tripped over the first step and cracked its jaw on the fourth step as it fell. The second one, much smarter than the first, grabbed the railing and began to pull itself upward. This second one was a woman and she looked to be in pretty good shape. In fact, she was somewhat attractive. Baches thought she looked like one of his old girlfriends and then prayed that he was wrong. He couldn’t get at it with the knife because of their awkward positioning so he shoved the butt of his rifle into its face. The first hit didn’t have the desired effect. It staggered back for a moment, but held its grip on the railing.
No pain.
Readjusting his grip on the rifle, Baches swept it up under the arm, pulling its hand away from the railing. Then, without skipping a beat, he brought the rifle forward in a protracted swing and knocked it down the stairs. Its head hit the wall and then a stair as it fell, ending its miserable existence. That last bit was stroke of luck but Baches wasn’t one to look a gift horse (whatever that is) in the mouth.
As they moved through the basement, there were several such encounters. At no time did they find a concentration of more than six zombies nor were they besieged at any point. Baches was very careful about making noise and keeping his people close and tight. It took them almost three hours to place all of the explosives and work their way back out. Three hours in that stinking tomb. But there were no casualties. As he and the rest of his team stepped safely out into the snowy December morning, Baches was able to smile, take a deep breath, and revel in the satisfaction of a job well done.
***
Poor Spinelli was not so lucky.
When the assignments were doled out and Spinelli drew the short straw for the insane asylum in New Jersey, he was sure things were going to go terribly. But when they arrived on the scene, joined by Jersey City Police, and saw that most of the windows were broken out and sunlight streamed into the building from all angles, he thought it was going to be a cakewalk. Sure, they’d have to go into the basement to set many of the charges, but the in and out of it looked like it would be easy.
It wasn’t.
They ran into trouble almost immediately. There were scores of them at the entrances, all clamoring to get out. The ZRA people had done a good job of locking up the building, but there wasn’t any way for the police to gain entry without having to battle dozens of zombies. It was suggested that they go in through the roof, but they’d still have to fight their way to the basement. Their best bet at that point was to set up a firing squad, open one door, and just pick them off one at a time as they came out of the building. So that’s what they did.
It took about five and a half minutes for the door to become choked with bodies. The first few out were taken down in seconds. Those became obstacles for the others, who clawed and scrambled their ways forward over their fallen brethren. Soon enough, it became almost impossible for the zombies to get through the doorway. The police could hear them moaning and clawing and scraping. The pile of bodies jiggled and swayed against the pressure from behind. Before long a puddle of black ooze began to seep out from underneath the pile. At this rate, it was going to take forever for them to get inside. They needed a new plan.
There were six entrances to asylum on the ground floor. Spinelli set up firing squads of four shooters around each one and ordered them all opened. He told his shooters to give the zombies a chance to get through the door before firing. This would give the others room to maneuver. He still had to leave two people stationed at the first door because the persistent dead behind them would eventually tear their way through.
It was about this time that the news crews began to show up. The New Jersey police officers held them at bay but their presence still made Spinelli uneasy. He didn’t like being in the spotlight.
Giving the order, he watched as two chains on his side of the building were simultaneously cut and informed that the other three had been cut around the other sides. The doors flew open and the undead began to pour out. The sound of weapons fire filled the air.
At first, all was going well. The zombies came through the doors in twos and threes and were taken down easily enough. They were given three or four feet of leeway so that the others could come out as well.
This lasted eight minutes and thirty six seconds. How many zombies can you kill in eight minutes and thirty six seconds and still see no sign of relief?
One of the shooters from Entrance 5 radioed in that there seemed to be a higher concentration of the undead than they had initially thought. They were beginning to get further away from the door and he needed another shooter to even things out. Without missing a beat, Spinelli ordered one of the idle shooters from the first door around to Entrance 5.
After another two minutes of continuous fire, Spinelli picked up a rifle himself and wondered, Where are they all coming from? Entrance 2 needed the most help so he took up a position there and began shooting. Part of the problem was the aim. It was difficult for everyone to make every shot a head shot. He could see that some of the zombies going down were only getting up a few seconds later. And there were more coming through. He could see that he actually needed to slow down the flow. At this point, it was impossible to seal the
doors back up. No one would be able to get in there in time as the zombies were pushing further and further out. It was a siege and he didn't know what to do.
Tapping a man on the shoulder, he shouted an order. He told him to concentrate his fire on the doorway. Block it up as best he could. Immediately, he began firing on those just coming through. It had an immediate effect, slowing the flow.
