“Get your men out, Lieutenant! Quickly!”
The rear doors of the vehicle swung open and Lieutenant Feng Yubing screamed at his men to disembark. It was night, the streets of Dandong made wet by a passing thunderstorm. Feng splashed down onto the pavement and drew his sidearm. There were nine men in his motorized infantry squad, and none of them had ever seen action. They were kitted in full combat gear, their faces beneath the rims of their helmets wide-eyed and sweating from the cramped airless confines of the APC’s noisy interior. Feng waved his arm urgently and ordered the men to take defensive positions around the vehicle.
They were in a narrow alley behind a high-rise building that overlooked the Yalu River Park. Feng glanced around him quickly to check for threats. Commercial waste bins choked the alleyway and the gutters were strewn with litter. At the far end of the service lane he could see cardboard boxes and broken wooden pallets beside the dark shapes of parked cars. The air stank of rotting garbage and diesel exhaust fumes. He cursed bitterly. They weren’t supposed to have deployed here. They should have been closer to the bridge.
Overhead the night was filled with the sawing clatter of swooping helicopters and the bright flashing lights of flares. Alarms and sirens were ringing – but above it all was the deafening roar of… of what?
It sounded like a hundred thousand football fans in the amphitheater of a stadium, or the crashing of a storm-battered sea; it was the terrifying sound of screams and rage.
Feng snatched a glimpse around the sheltering edge of the APC and felt his blood turn to ice. Five hundred yards away, streaming across the grey elongation of the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, was a human tide; a seething screaming mass of bodies pressed together. They spilled onto the wide open space of the river park’s manicured lawns, running crazed and bloodied past statues that lined the waterfront – surging like an inhuman wave towards the urban sprawl of the city that he and the rest of the 16th Group Army had been ordered to defend.
Lieutenant Feng felt fear like a punch to the heart. He stood rooted in paralyzing shock while in the sky directly above him two Chinese helicopters launched missiles into the crowd. The eruption of each blast shook the earth and tore huge craters in the grassland. The undead swarm was a dark diabolical mass. It writhed and changed shape, contorted as though shuddering under the tremendous impact – but then surged onwards again.
Feng looked around him in panic and confusion. The driver of the APC was over-revving the motor, spewing great gouts of exhaust smoke into the night. Then he heard a dramatic change in the engine beat and the sudden squeal of its tracks as the vehicle began to reverse. Feng jumped out of the way. The APC’s gunner was leaning out of the main turret, firing the vehicle’s machine gun into the approaching horde of undead. The roar of automatic fire sounded like heavy canvas tearing. Feng reeled away from the sound, his senses overwhelmed by the cacophony of explosions and gunfire, and the chilling snarled roar of the infected that seemed to rise to a shrill screech. The night seemed to tear itself apart with dazzling flashes like a thousand lightning strikes. Searchlights mounted to the helicopters crisscrossed the Chinese bank of the Yalu, and explosions lit up the darkness like fireworks.
Beside one of the huge steel waste bins was the dark shape of a service door that opened into the high rise. Feng looked at it, torn and uncertain. He knew that to stand in this alleyway was certain death – his squad could never hope to hold back the press of undead bodies. But to retreat into the building was against his orders, and his fear of failing in his duty was just as great as his fear of death. He licked his lips. Six of his men were armed with assault rifles and another carried the RPG. He looked to the two men who operated the machine gun.
Feng made his decision.
“Take up position!” Lieutenant Feng barked the order. His men moved mechanically, their training so deeply ingrained that their actions became instinctive. The machine gun crew threw themselves down on the wet tarmac using the shelter of the waste bin while the rest of his men flattened themselves behind any cover they could find and took aim. Feng stood in the middle of the alley, legs braced, sidearm aimed into the uncoiling mass that loomed out of the darkness. He guessed they were a hundred yards away, coming closer in a crazed berserker rush. There were too many to count – too many to kill. Feng swallowed hard and screamed the order to fire.
At the same instant two flares arced up into the night from somewhere west of the alley. They lit the swollen storm clouds glowing red and bathed the horde of undead in hellish color. A machine gun opened fire from a building closer to the bridge, supported by the rattle of small arms. It gave Feng little comfort to know that his men were not the only ones about to face the infected.
In the crushing din of combat, the timid spit of fire thrown out by Feng’s squad of terrified troopers who were trapped in the narrow alley barely registered. Chinese helicopters had belatedly begun firing missiles at the hordes of infected still streaming across the bridge, and the crumping echo of explosions along the riverbank had intensified as mortars and missiles were targeted on the infected. Feng’s fusillade of machine gun chatter and automatic fire went unnoticed. The infected crushed towards the soldiers, relentless and crazed. They were splashed with blood, many of them disfigured or dismembered. They were dirty mud splattered ghouls in wretched rags thrashing with the fury of their insanity, gnashing rotted teeth and howling. Their hands were grotesque claws, their eyes seemed to bulge in the distorted snarling faces. They came on in a mindless rush of stomping feet that sounded like the chaotic beat of a million drums against the ground.
Feng shot one of the infected in the chest from point-blank range. It had been a man; now it was a demented fiend, spitting blood and staggering as though not in control of its own body. Its eyes were evil, yellow and malevolent, its tongue lolling black and swollen from the side of its mouth. The bullet struck the undead in the chest. It was flung backward by the impact, and thrown to the ground. It got up again, lowered its head and howled infernally. Its eyes seemed to shine in triumph and spite.
Feng flinched in shock. He stared down at his pistol with a lump of cold dread rising dry in his throat. He turned round to order his men to fall back towards the far end of the alley. It was too late.
As he spun on his heel to flee, the swarm of howling undead seemed to curl over him like a wave about to crash. Feng felt raking claws at his back, felt the tug and tear of his uniform. The stench of fetid, putrid death washed over him. He heard himself screaming – the sound shrill and terrified in his own ears. He cried out in terrible pain as the ghouls clawed at his throat and his body became drenched with his own warm blood.
The undead fell upon the Chinese Lieutenant like ravenous wolves, biting at his legs as he fell to the ground, and then shredding the flesh from his shins and gnawing on the bones. For Feng the last few seconds of his life were the hellish nightmare of being eaten alive. He had just enough strength left to thrust the barrel of his pistol into his gasping mouth and squeeze the trigger before the infection could overtake him.
Immediately the rest of the squad turned to flee in white-faced panic, shouting with terror and loathing.
“Run!”
“Retreat down the alley!”
“Get into the buildings!”
The undead in the alleyway came on, humping like a wave and compressing into a solid mass that funneled between the tall buildings. They caught the slowest of the soldiers before they could reach the darkened door of the building and fell upon the bodies with triumphant frenzied howls. Ragged shots rang out in the night and then there was just the screaming – the dreadful terrified shrieking of nightmares.
None of Lieutenant Feng’s squad survived. The crew of the APC was over-run at the end of the ally because their vehicle was unable to turn out of the tight confines of the lane. The commander, gunner and driver were hauled bodily from the vehicle and their bodies torn apart. Blood spattered the pavement and ran into the gutters.
The corp
ses lay broken and barely recognizable as the trample of frenzied infected swept out of the alley and into the buildings that lined the edge of the river. The undead broke like a human tsunami along Qingnian Street and spilled into the side roads that lead into the residential districts. The Dandong skyline became backlit with the orange glow of fires burning out of control.
The communications center at 16th Group Army headquarters was inundated with panicked radio reports from throughout Dandong. General Guo Lingfeng, Chief of Staff for the Shengyang Military Area, glowered over a map. His features sagged as the dire news from the frontline came in a disastrous torrent. The mechanized infantry he had sent rushing into the city to defend the riverside foreshore had been overwhelmed by the undead, and there were still reports that the Sino-Korean Friendship bridge was standing, despite his orders for its immediate destruction. He barked an order for artillery fire to be directed on the bridge, knowing the rain of heavy shelling would destroy much of the city’s riverfront buildings… and knowing also that it was already far too late to have consequence. He shrugged. Collateral damage to infrastructure was the least of his concerns. He poured over the map for many long seconds and then shook his head in despair. This enemy was unlike anything he had trained to fight against. They attacked with no weapons, yet they were frenzied and unstoppable.
“Give the order to withdraw from the city immediately. All units must disengage,” Guo said to a worried Colonel from the 4th Armored Division with a resigned sigh. “The urban environment,” he waved his hand helplessly at the map, “makes it impossible for us to use our tanks effectively. This has become a street-fighting action and we are at a disadvantage.”
Guo had spent over forty years in the military, every one of those days of service committed to the 16th Group Army. He had served proudly with the artillery regiment for many years before promotion to chief of staff of the 46th Division. His career had been a slow steady rise into the upper stratosphere of Chinese military leadership. Two years ago he had completed that ascent to take command of the 16th Group Army and earn the responsibility of chief of staff for the entire Shenyang Military Area Command.
Now, in a single night, his illustrious career had been destroyed.
“We should have forfeited Dandong and fought them in the fields beyond the city where we had room to move our armor and could use our weapons to stand off at range from them,” he said gruffly. There were tears of shame in his red rheumy eyes. “This enemy…” he stumbled, searching for the right words, “cannot be fought at close quarters.”
He spent a long moment in bitter reflection, and then turned to his chief aide, standing quietly to one side.
“Get Beijing on the line,” General Guo choked. “I need to tell the Defense Minister that we cannot hold the undead back.”
NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE HEADQUARTERS
CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA
After the third satellite pass, the NRO analysts at the Asia Desk felt confident enough to draw conclusions based on the vast amounts of data being streamed from their birds in orbit high over the Sino-North Korea border.
The swarm of infected had reached the Yalu river and broken into China, overwhelming the defenses around the city of Dandong and then flooding into the surrounding countryside, like storm water bursting through a breach in a dam wall.
“The Chinese have been overwhelmed,” one senior analyst shook his head in disbelief. He highlighted several irregular shapes on the black and white imagery. “You can see here and here, where a whole motorized division has been crushed, and another has fallen back in retreat. The Chinese have taken heavy losses.”
“Have we identified the units?” the Desk supervisor wanted everything checked and ticked before committing himself.
“Yeah,” the analyst said, leaning back in his chair to reach for a sheath of nearby printouts. “What you’re looking at are the remnants of the 4th Armored Division. They’re part of the 16th Group Army.”
“Not any more, they’re not,” the supervisor said.
The NRO was one of America’s ‘big five’ intelligence agencies, answerable to the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense, and staffed by tens of thousands of defense contractor personnel who had been drawn primarily from the CIA, NGA, Air Force, Navy and NSA.
“They’ve lost more than equipment and men,” the Asia desk supervisor frowned. He snatched off his spectacles and polished the lenses on the sleeve of his shirt. “The Chinese were the last lock on this thing to stop it spreading towards Europe. Now the infected have crossed the Yalu…” he left the thought unfinished because it was too dreadful to contemplate.
He snatched for a phone to call the Pentagon. The biological infection was about to become a global epidemic.
USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN-76)
SOUTH CHINA SEA
The two Black Hawk helicopters came clattering out of the eastern sky, their silhouettes made bulky by long-range fuel tanks as they closed on the vast American aircraft carrier. Once above the four-and-a-half acres of flight deck, they hovered, suspended in the air for long seconds before landing on the port side, opposite the ship’s towering island that rose almost nine stories into the sky.
The Black Hawks’ rotors spun down. A man leaped to the deck from the cabin of the first helicopter, followed by two other men and a woman.
To the lieutenant junior grade who dashed forward to meet them, the new arrivals looked more like tourists than Delta personnel. The men wore loose-fitting t-shirts, joggers and cargo pants with pockets down each leg. The woman wore a blue tank-top and tight-fitting jeans. Their eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, their complexions sallow and anemic, as though they had been hidden from the sun for long months. The men were unshaven, each carrying a steel briefcase.
The lieutenant junior grade came to a halt and stiffened. The four people stopped. The men set their briefcases on the deck.
“You’re Tony van den Berg?” the lieutenant junior grade asked the man leading the three others.
“Yeah.”
“My name is Ted Brown. I’m your onboard liaison.”
“We don’t have time for introductions,” van den Berg said, brusque and abrupt. He was a tall brawny man, the muscles across his chest and forearms blurred soft as though the tone they once held had been allowed to fade. He looked in his mid-twenties. His jaw was shadowed with two days of stubble. “Just show us where we can put our gear and make sure no one aboard bothers us.”
Despite the clear sky and the gentle breeze blowing across the deck, the air was tainted with the pungent odor of JP-5 jet fuel. The sun’s warmth seemed to startle the Delta Intel team. To the lieutenant junior grade, the four figures in front of him looked like Hollywood’s idea of vampires, so pale and bloodless were their complexions.
In the background, Delta operators disembarked from the second Black Hawk. They were big, burly figures that walked with a Special Forces swagger. They stretched their legs, talking quietly amongst themselves, and then began unloading long flat boxes of equipment.
“We’ve made space for you three decks down,” Lieutenant Junior Grade Brown led the way into the belly of the vast warship. The interior was cool, the passageways narrow and the air strangely sterile. Dull metallic echoes of sound overlaid a constant hum that seemed to be a noise like a faint vibration – as if the ship were a living, breathing thing.
The space reserved for the Intel team was in the ship’s stern; an area the size of a mobile trailer home that reeked with the stink of engine oil and wet paint. Van den Berg grunted. He had worked in worse places.
“We’ll need four long tables, four chairs, about a hundred cans of Coke and as many bags of chips,” van den Berg said. Lieutenant Junior Grade Brown looked bemused but he nodded his head dutifully. He started writing everything down in a pocket notebook. Two of the Delta operatives pushed their way past, carrying boxes. The woman dropped to her haunches and began unpacking the equipment.
“We’ve a
rranged sleeping quarters for everyone in the –”
“No,” van den Berg cut the lieutenant junior grade off. “When we’re on a mission, we don’t sleep. Just get us the food, drinks and furniture… oh, and I need you to post Marine guards outside this door. No one is permitted to enter, understand? No one.”
Lieutenant Junior Grade Brown had been in the Navy just long enough to earn his commission. He was young and nervous, and the Delta men towered over him like trees, arrogant and intimidating. He swallowed hard and bobbed his head. His orders had been to cater to the Delta team’s needs.
“I’ll see to everything immediately.”
Three more operatives came along the narrow passage hauling the rest of the equipment. Lieutenant Junior Grade Brown had to flatten himself against a bulkhead to let them pass. Tony van den Berg took off his sunglasses. His eyes were black as coal, sunk deep into the cage of their sockets by the relentless demands of his work. He slammed the door shut on the Navy officer and turned to address his Intel team. His voice was a raspy growl.
“Okay, guys. It’s time to rock ‘n’ roll.”
ZHONG NAN HAI PRECINCT
BEIJING
Tong Ge placed his briefcase on the empty chair beside him and emptied the contents onto Yi Dan’s desk. There were several thick folders, maps and schematic drawings. He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts and then launched into a detailed explanation of how Operation ‘Red Ark’ would save China.
Or at least millions of her people.
“Minister, first we must be clear in the mathematics,” Tong declared. “I told the Politburo that China had over one-hundred thousand merchant ships, and this is indeed true, but the majority of those vessels are small craft that ply the rivers and coastal regions. They will be suitable only for local evacuations, not for an operation such as ‘Red Ark’.”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 20
