by John Ringo
“Brains, Brains, Brains…!” the crowd chanted.
Of course, he started with Brains, then all the oldies and goodies. Vampire Club, Demonslayer, USS Make-Shit-Up… She knew them all and she’d always wanted to see him in concert.
An underground concert in a park in NYC in the middle of an apocalypse was just…perfect.
He was in the middle of Day of the Dead, when she heard the first shotgun blast…
* * *
“The 1911 is a great gun,” Faith shouted. “But it’s really obsolete technology. And it’s only got seven rounds! I prefer the H &K.”
“Try getting service out of them,” Durante shouted back. They were standing side by side with Faith watching the bands and Durante watching the outer darkness. They’d both put in earplugs even after Voltaire showed up. You could still hear him and she wasn’t a huge Voltaire fan. “And a 1911 doesn’t have a ‘I crack if you look at me wrong’ polymer frame.”
“You can shoot an H &K under water,” Faith said.
“You can shoot a 1911 under water,” Durante replied. “Although I don’t know why you’d have to. That’s called a strawman argument.”
“Once, maybe,” Faith argued. “But an H &K has an octagonal barrel. It can handle a much higher load.”
“We’re just going to have to agree to disagree,” Durante said, grinning.
“I wish they had, like, Atreyu or Avenged Sevenfold,” Faith said. “Sophia must be having a blast, though.” They’d all been keeping her under light surveillance.
“She seems to be,” Durante said. “She seems more…” He paused and shook his head. “BOSS! COMPANY!”
“Cops?” Faith asked, looking over her shoulder.
“No.”
Coming out of the shadows of the trees she could see two naked people, male and female, trotting towards the concert-goers.
“Shit,” she said, drawing her taser.
“Again, let me take it,” Durante said, drawing one of his. “Less questions.”
The zombies weren’t heading directly their way so Durante trotted to the side to interpose himself between them and the crowd.
“I’m surprised it’s taken this long,” Tom said. A Glock had appeared from somewhere.
“Uh, oh,” Faith said, gesturing to the side. More zombies were coming out of the trees. Lots of zombies. And they were moving fast. “Uncle Tom?”
“I don’t think tasers are going to do it,” Tom said. “DURANTE! MULTIPLES. HOT ROUNDS!”
Durante had already tasered the two zombies and injected one. He dropped his injector as he was preparing to inject the second and switched to the Saiga.
“See?” Steve said. “I told you this was a bad idea.” He had his 1911 in a two handed grip and Stacey had his back holding a Sig Sauer.
“Cell service is out,” Tom said. “Shit. Engage at will.”
“On it,” Faith said, drifting right. Durante had gone left to engage the first two. Moving right she was closer to covering Sophia. She and the group with her were apparently completely oblivious to the approaching threat.
Faith put her eye to the point and shoot scope on the Saiga and targeted the first approaching zombie.
“This is how you handle a zombie apocalypse,” she said, just as Durante fired.
CHAPTER 14
Sophia spun around and saw Faith fire at one of the fast approaching infecteds. The fiftyish woman was thrown back with her chest opened up by the twelve gauge round. But she wasn’t the only one inbound for the concert goers.
Sophia didn’t even hesitate. Her father had run her through too many tactical ranges and her actions were muscle memory. She’d been standing towards the back of the group and now stepped forward, covering their rear, and ripped her 1911 from its holster. Taking a two handed grip she targeted the closest zombie, putting two.45 rounds into his chest. She was using polymer-tipped expanding hollowpoints, which on impact spread out to make not a.45 inch hole but a nearly inch wide one. The “lab tech” had recently been getting an eclectic masters level course in biology including mammalian anatomy and physiology. She could practically recite the blood vessels her rounds took out without doing the autopsy. The infected took two more steps and dropped.
She’d been carrying a round in the chamber and a full magazine for the 1911. If she’d been in the earlier argument with her sister she would have pointed out, didactically, that that way a 1911 can carry eight rounds. Which did for four infecteds.
But there were more.
* * *
“This job fucking sucks.”
Specialist Cameron “Gunner” Randall, New York Army National Guard, was tired, aggravated and frustrated. He was a fricking 13Foxtrot: a fire support specialist. He was supposed to be calling for artillery fire. Not roaming the streets of New York “enforcing the curfew.” Among other things, they weren’t “enforcing the curfew.” There was a fucking concert going on right there in Washington Square Park. And he and his guys had to just “maintain presence.” What the fuck did “maintain presence” mean?
What they really were were roaming zombie collectors. They carried their issue M4s but so far all they’d used were Tasers. Taser the zombie, inject, call for pickup. Tell people there was a curfew. Tell people. Not order them back to their flipping homes. “Remind them.” And the ROE for shooting a zombie with your M4 went to ten pages. “And don’t bother the concert.”
It really, really sucked. He never thought that a deployment in the states would suck more than the Stan. But this sucked.
“Well, at least it’s a slow night.”
SGT James R. “Worf” Copley thought their current job was idiotic on so many levels it wasn’t funny. Among other things, since “zombieitis” whatever they were calling it this week was incurable, the “care facilities” were not only getting overrun with infected they’d started as nightmares and just gotten worse. Killing them, sad as it was, would have been a mercy. And if they were going to have a curfew it should be enforced. But this was New York City. The city that never slept. And even with occasional power outages, food shortages and zombies it was going to go right on being “The City That Never Sleeps” until things blew over or it all went to shit.
“Maybe all the zombies are at the concert,” Private Patricia Astroga said, wistfully. “I don’t suppose we could stop by just for a bit to…ensure security?”
“I’m not really into alternative…” Sergeant Copley said. “Besides…” He paused as he heard the distinctive boom of a shotgun from the direction of the concert followed by a series of shotgun and pistol blasts. What amazed him was that whoever was caterwauling keep right on singing over what was working up to a full-fledged firefight.
“On the other hand,” Randall said.
“Let’s roll,” Copley replied. “Fours, not Tasers…”
* * *
Sophia was reloading, visually tracking another inbound target, when her arm was grabbed from behind.
“What are you doing?” Christine asked. “You can’t shoot those zombies!”
“‘Can’t,’ ‘may not’ and ‘shouldn’t’ are three different things,” Sophia said, seating the magazine and letting the slide go forward. “And what I’m doing is protecting you. Why the hell are you still here?” She looked over her shoulder and was amazed that the concert was still going on. Thinking about it, Voltaire hadn’t even missed a beat.
“They come every night,” Todd said. “It’s their concert.”
“What?” Sophia asked, her eyes wide. “Don’t they…? Don’t you get attacked?”
“They bite some people,” Christine said. “Sometimes they eat. I’ve been waiting to get bitten. But they haven’t taken me, yet.”
“WHAT?” Sophia screamed. The infected was inside fifteen meters so she put two rounds in her chest and turned back, keeping her weapon pointed downrange and looking over her shoulder. “WHAT? Are you flipping nuts? You WANT to be a zombie?”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of if you�
��re a zombie,” Christine said, starting to cry. “You just are. You just exist. It’s like…”
“It’s like zen, you know?” Todd said, swaying back and forth. “You just exist in the moment, man. There’s no stress. No school, no work, just eat or be eaten. It’s like Rousseau’s noble savage, the beast inside every man.”
“You are absolutely batshit fucking nuts,” Sophia said, looking back to the target zone. Another inbound. “I am not going to be turned into a zombie. My sister got infected but she pulled through and we are not going to be zombies. We are not.”
“You just don’t get it,” Todd said. “Myrmidon.”
“Idiot,” Sophia said, double tapping the next inbound. She looked around and had time so she quickly reloaded her magazines.
“And now you’ve brought the fucking soldiers here,” Christine said, disgustedly. “They’re going to just blow us all away! Babykillers!”
“You want to be a zombie?” Sophia asked. She grabbed Todd by the arm and walked him over to the nearest fresh corpse. Then she pulled out a clasp knife. “Cut your arm. Wipe some of the blood on it. Instant zombie.”
“I…” Todd said. “Let go of me…”
“You’re not going to because you’re afraid,” Sophia said, holding the knife up to his eye-level. “You’re afraid because you’re not willing to fight back. You’re the poet. What’s the thing about the raging and darkness?”
“You mean Dylan Thomas?” Todd said, disdainfully. “‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’?”
“Do not go gentle into this good night,” Sophia snarled, waving at the darkness all around. “Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“That is what you should be doing!” she finished. “Raging against the dying of the light. You’re not even in old age!”
“You knew the poem,” Todd said, wonderingly.
“I got an A plus in a really tough AP English class,” Sophia said. “And AP Physics. And Calculus. And I know how to kill zombies. What the fuck have you been doing with your life?”
“You want to tell us what’s been going on here, miss?” the sergeant of the three man team asked. They weren’t up and pointed but you could tell they were here for a fire-fight.
“We’re having a poetry and philosophy discussion,” Sophia said, holstering her pistol. “I’m glad you could join us…”
* * *
“Contractors,” Copley said, disgustedly. “Never thought I’d have to deal with you guys in New York City. I had enough of you in the Stan.”
“Hey,” Durante said, shrugging his shoulders. “Be glad we were here. Otherwise half this crowd would be going zombie.”
“From what I got from Sophia, that’s happened before,” Steve Smith, “President of Blue Water Security, LLC” said. He hadn’t even known he was a “president” until Tom handed him the certifications. “When’s NYPD getting here?”
“They’re not,” Copley said, shaking his head. “We’re not even getting coroner’s office. I’m told to take down the information, then await graves registration.”
“It’s gotten that bad, huh?” Tom said. “And your ROE probably still says ‘do not fire until fired upon.’”
“It’s better than that,” Copley said. “But not much.”
* * *
“So… You guys get to shoot ’em?” Randall asked.
“Not usually,” Faith said. “Usually we have to taser ’em. There were too many this time. You guys gotta wear that rig all the time?”
The National Guardsmen were in masks, hoods and ponchoes.
“Keeps the blood off,” Randall said.
“Makes sense,” Faith said. “I got in a scuffle with one the other day and it bled all over me. Ended up very nearly going zombie myself. You do not want to get it even if you don’t zomb. Sickest I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Damn,” Randall said. “So… You’re not going to zombie, right?”
“Certified immune,” Faith said. “My immune system got it. Low dosage of the virus I guess. Don’t even have any antibodies anymore, which is medicalese for ‘you’re not going to be a zombie.’ Shook it off completely. Not that it was much fun. Horrible sick.”
“I’ll keep my poncho on, then,” Randall said. “Let me tell you, this shit is hot, though.”
“Better or worse than the Sandbox?” Faith asked.
“Oh, better,” Randall said. “But not much.”
“Nice rig,” Astroga said. “What is that rifle?”
“Shotgun,” Faith said. “Saiga. It’s an AK variant that fires twelve gauge.” She dropped the magazine and cleared and handed it over to the private. “Ten round magazine. Which beats a pump all to hell.”
“Is it reliable?” Randall asked. “May I?”
“Sure,” Faith said. “As long as I get it back. Especially if we get any more visitors.”
“Nice,” Randall said.
“Love the kukri,” Faith said, gesturing at the combat knife on his belt.
“Carried it in Iraq and the Stan,” Randall said. He hesitated for a second, then handed it over. “Thought it might come in handy.”
“Sweet,” Faith said, examining it. It had the word “Boosh” carved on the handle. “I’ve got one on the boat. They said it was overkill for tonight. Famous last words.”
“There is no overkill,” Randall intoned. “There is only open fire and reload.”
“Schlock fan, huh?” Faith said. “I knew the world was coming to an end when Schlock didn’t update.”
“It’s heavy,” Astroga said. “The Saiga.”
“I’ll take the firepower any day,” Faith said, gesturing with her chin at the M4. “The U.S. started to go downhill when it changed from a round designed to kill our enemies to one designed to piss them off.”
“Nice quote,” Randall said. “That one I don’t recognize.”
“Read it on some blog,” she said, then looked up. The entire skyline had gone black as had all the lights in the park. “Oh, that is not good. Getting home is going to be a bitch and a half.”
“I wonder if the subways are out, too,” Astroga said nervously. “I’d hate to be in a subway in the dark in this.”
“We’ve got…” Faith then paused. She reached for her Saiga. “Wasn’t what I was going to say but what we’ve got is movement.”
A woman was running through the park pursued by a zombie. Before she could get to the relative safety of the group of concert-goers, another came at her from the side and knocked her down. She started screaming.
“Move it!” Copley said, waving.
The threesome ran to the woman, stopping just short to fire tasers into the zombies attacking her. One of them seemed to be trying to sexually assault her.
“Okay,” Faith said. “That’s just gross.”
She looked away and then turned back at another scream. Astroga had been attacked from behind by another infected. She was struggling to throw it off. Randall tasered it but there were more. Suddenly, the threesome was surrounded by zombies and there were now screams from the concert goers.
Looking around, Faith realized that there were more and more of the zombies closing on the concert.
“The lights!” Tom shouted. “They’re zeroing in on the lights!”
Suddenly, an M4 went to full auto and Faith heard rounds zipping by her head. Copley pushed his way through the crowd of zombies, dragging Astroga by the harness. She could see Randall, clearly out of rounds and with no time to reload, wielding his kukri and chopping zombies left and right.
“Rock and roll!” Copley screamed. “Just shoot! We’
re in armor!”
“Authorized,” Tom said, taking a two handed stance. “Try not to hit the good guys.”
“Uncle Tom!” Faith said, backing towards her group and firing to the side. “We’ve got more coming!”
“This way, too,” Stacey called. “They’re in the concert.”
Faith glanced over her shoulder and saw something she never expected to see. Ever. With the defenses around the actual stage, where the lights were, the zombies couldn’t climb up. Zombies coming down Fifth Avenue had bent around the stage until they hit the dancers in the mosh pit. A naked, writhing zombie was being crowd-surfed over the group. So far, the moshers seemed to consider the zombies to be a feature not a bug. Just more people to hit.
When it dropped into the regular concert-goers, the screams started. and there were more being crowd-surfed back.
“Remind me to pick up some mosh gear,” Faith shouted.
“On you,” Sophia called.
“Cover me while I reload,” Faith said. There was a tidal wave of zombies coming for them and she made if not the fastest reload in her life than close. She had to make sure to keep the magazine since she foresaw a time in the not too distant future when getting more would be a bit of a pain.
“And we’re back,” Faith said, taking three quick blasts to clear their side. “Where the fuck are they all coming from?”
“Thanks,” Copley said as the three soldiers reached the perimeter of the contractor group. “Thanks, thanks…”
“Reload and start laying down,” Tom said. “We’re not out of this yet. And call for back-up.”
“Roger, sir,” Copley said.
“You, specialist,” Tom said, pointing to Randall. “East side. Durante, South. Faith, West. You, private,” he said, pointing at Astroga. “North towards the concert. We’re going to start moving south. Myself and Steve will back Durante.”
“That’s right into most of them, boss,” Durante pointed out. He was keeping up a slow-aimed fire with his Saiga. “Reloading.”
“Covering,” Steve said.
“Questions later,” Tom said, taking down two zombies with two shots. “Sergeant, stay on the horn.”
