gatheringdeadkindle

by Stephen Knight

  Yep, the world’s going to Hell in a handcart.

  McDaniels switched back to the private frequency, which was still blissfully silent. He fidgeted in his seat and looked out the grimy window. It was an early afternoon in October, and the leaves in Central Park were starting their colorful transition. This was the time for horse-drawn carriage rides and lovers strolling hand in hand, while dogs dashed about, chased by small children. That picture had gone out of focus days ago. McDaniels wondered if the Big Apple would ever be able to recover. If it was allowed the chance. While at U.S. Army Special Operations Command, he had overhead some possible plans to deal with the threat in New York City, and some of them consisted of essentially turning Manhattan Island into one giant brazier.

  “Terminator Six, this is Rapier, over.”

  The voice over the radio jarred McDaniels back to the here and now. He keyed his headset’s push-to-talk button. “Rapier, this is Terminator Six, over.”

  “Terminator Six, Rapier. SITREP, over.”

  “Rapier, Terminator Six. Package in transit, heading for assembly area ROMEO. We are in the Park, and are no longer in immediate contact with any zeds at this time, over.” McDaniels’ situation report was brief and succinct, just the way the Army brass liked it.

  “Terminator Six, Rapier. Roger that, and good work. The Black Hawks are spooling up and will be ready to break deck the second the package is aboard, over.”

  Another volley of gunfire caught McDaniels’ attention. Much closer this time. Even thought he couldn’t see any immediate threat, he clicked the fire selector on his M4 from SAFE to SEMI. They were so close to getting out of this shit that if something were to go down, now would be the perfect time.

  “Terminator, Rapier. Did you copy that last, over.”

  “Rapier, Terminator Six. Roger, good copy across the board. We’ll come back to you when we’re airborne, over.”

  “Roger that, Terminator Six. Rapier, out here.”

  “Coming up on the assembly area, major,” Gartrell said. “Looks like there’s some serious activity on the far side, which is where ROMEO is.” ROMEO was the two MH-60M Black Hawks that were tasked to transfer Safire, his daughter, McDaniels, Gartrell, and the rest of OMEN Team to MacArthur Airport on Long Island. From there, they would board an Air Force jet and fly to Fort Detrick, Maryland, where McDaniels and Gartrell would escort Doctor Safire to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Once that transaction had been completed, McDaniels didn’t know what lay in store for him. He hoped that being reunited with his family in North Carolina was on the short list.

  “How far are we from the ROMEO aircraft?” McDaniels leaned forward and looked through the Humvee’s windshield. Civilians streamed across the road in tight, panicked groups, despite the throng of soldiers and police trying to hold them back. Leary had to slow down to keep from running people over.

  “I’d guess about five hundred meters.” Gartrell glanced back at McDaniels. “I know what you’re thinking, major. We should get closer before we try and hoof it.”

  “We might not have much of a choice if this doesn’t get under control, first sergeant.” McDaniels pressed his radio button. “Two-Six, this is Six. Get ready to abandon the Humvees. We might have to go the rest of the way on foot, over.”

  Keith answered immediately. “Six, Two-Six, roger.”

  They stuck with the Humvees for as long as they could, but after having traveled no more than a hundred meters in almost ten minutes, McDaniels decided to dismount. The security situation was clearly deteriorating more quickly than the forces on hand could handle. If they were going to get out of New York City before it fell to the ravenous ghouls that charged through its cold concrete canyons, they would have to leave the comparative safety of the armored Humvees.

  “My daughter. I’m not leaving without her,” Safire said obstinately as Leary brought the Humvee to a halt.

  “She’s still coming with us, doctor,” McDaniels said. “Now let’s get going.”

  The pall of smoke had grown thicker, and it filled McDaniels’ nostrils with a sharp, acrid odor as he flung open the Humvee’s heavy, up-armored door and stepped out into the hazy autumn daylight. Gartrell stepped out from behind him, his Atchisson AA-12 autoshotgun already shouldered and ready. The first sergeant’s head panned from side to side like a tank turret as he took in the sights. While they were safe for the moment, all around them New Yorkers were rushing into the park, thousands of them. The few soldiers they encountered tried to stop them, but the flow of refugees was too great. Just the same, gunfire broke out, and people screamed and whimpered.

  “My God, are your people shooting innocent civilians?” Safire asked.

  “These aren’t ‘my people’, Doctor Safire. But there’s definitely some shooting going on, but I don’t want to guess at whom.” McDaniels ran a gloved hand over his face, then pulled his goggles over his eyes. The smoke had started to make them burn already.

  CW3 Keith rolled up with the rest of his team in tow. In the center of the formation was a tall, raven-haired woman with tanned skin and the biggest green eyes McDaniels thought he had ever seen. She didn’t look much like her father, which was probably a bonus. She looked tense, but not frightened.

  “Regina!” Safire called.

  Regina Safire hurried toward her father and embraced him immediately. She fairly towered over the stooped scientist, and McDaniels saw there was more to the embrace than just filial piety. The look in Regina’s eyes hardened as she looked around, taking everything in. She was protecting her father as best as she could, and McDaniels had to appreciate her grit.

  “We’re ready to roll,” Keith said as he stopped beside McDaniels. “I figure we should keep you, the first sergeant, and the Safires in the center of the formation while the rest of us make up the bleeding edge.” As he spoke, Keith didn’t look at McDaniels or First Sergeant Gartrell. His eyes were cast outward, surveying the chaos that threatened to swallow them up whole. The rest of OMEN Team took up defensive postures with their weapons charged and ready to fire.

  McDaniels nodded. “We need to get to the ROMEO aircraft, which Gartrell says are about four hundred meters that way.” He pointed into the hazy day where the collection of aircraft sat. A nearby CH-47 Chinook came alive, its gigantic rotors slowly turning as its turboshaft engines shrieked.

  “We shouldn’t wait any longer,” Keith said over the rising din. Without waiting for the major’s agreement, Keith barked orders to the rest of his men. They formed a loose phalanx around the civilians and the two soldiers from Army Special Operations Command, and led the way toward the helicopters.

  “I like his can-do attitude,” Gartrell said, half-shouting so McDaniels could hear him over the Chinook. “I also like how he automatically determined that we’re a pair of PUNTS.” PUNTS was the acronym for Personnel of Utterly No Tactical Significance, or more simply, individuals who were of no use operationally. McDaniels shrugged. He was a field grade officer, much higher up the food chain than Keith. But if the solidly-built warrant officer wanted to try and assert his dominance in the middle of the end of the world, McDaniels couldn’t give a damn. He had his own job to do.

  “Let’s hit it,” he said, taking one of Wolf Safire’s thin arms in his left hand. Gartrell did the same to Regina, and the two of them tugged their charges along as CW3 Keith and the rest of OMEN Team set out at an aggressive pace. They trotted through the smoke-filled park, shoving people out of their way. Most didn’t protest the harsh treatment, not when they were fighting to get to a helicopter and get out themselves. But one group of toughs—apparently gang-bangers from Harlem—elected to try and go to guns on one of the Special Forces soldiers. The soldiers didn’t hesitate. They killed each gang-banger with headshots.

  Because only headshots would keep them from turning into zeds.

  “Good God,” Safire groaned, sickened by what he had just witnessed. “With everything that’s going on, do we need to be killing eac
h other as well?”

  McDaniels shook the smaller, frailer man. “Snap out of it! Those pricks wanted to kill us and take our guns, and then try and hijack a chopper. No one’s wearing any kid gloves today, Doctor. We might have to kill a lot more people to get out of this.”

  “Stop hurting my father!” Regina shouted. She slammed her fist into McDaniels’ upper arm with enough force to hurt, but he favored her with what he hoped was a sufficiently grim smile.

  “That’s the spirit,” he said. Her eyes flashed and she drew her hand back to strike again, but then Gartrell jerked her forward.

  “Come on, let’s keep moving, miss. You don’t want to fall behind here,” the first sergeant said, his face unreadable behind his big goggles and the boom microphone of his headset.

  “Get your—”

  Whatever Regina Safire was going to say was swallowed up by the sudden shrieks that erupted from the team’s right. People ran from the trees separating East Drive from the Great Lawn like rabbits spooked from a bush by hunting dogs. And behind them came the walking dead, about forty or fifty of them. Some wore the woodland green battle dress utilities of Army soldiers. They fell upon any civilian they managed to catch and tore into them savagely. Blood glistened in the afternoon sunlight.

  “Keith!” McDaniels shouted. “Let’s pick up the pace!”

  Keith signaled the rest of the team to run.

  The assembly area erupted into pandemonium as the zeds poured into it. They overwhelmed the ground security forces stationed at the perimeter and attacked helicopter crews inside their aircraft. Some of the zombies met rather ignominious fates as they charged headlong into spinning tail rotors, where the vanes slashed them to pieces before fragmenting and whirling through the air. The fusillade of gunfire that met the zombies was ferocious, but it failed to stop those that were not hit in the head. And the gunfire had a secondary effect, as several civilians and other soldiers were cut down in the melee. In a matter of minutes, they would rise again and join the other zeds in their quest for human flesh. It was a cycle the military had been exposed to, but had not had the time to train for.

  As bullets snapped past McDaniels and Safire, the major pulled the older man along as if he were no more than a child. When one of the SF troops to his right suddenly went down, he forgot all about the high-value civilian in his left hand and released him, bringing his M4 around. The soldier screamed as two zombies slammed into him, taking him to the ground like a pair of NFL linebackers sacking a quarterback. The soldier got off a quick burst from his M4, but it was too low; the volley passed right through one zombie’s center of mass and did no substantial damage. McDaniels shouldered his own weapon and fired a single round through one zombie’s head. It dropped to the verdant green grass of the Great Lawn like a sack of potatoes, its dull eyes knocked askew by the impact. But the second zombie sank its teeth into the screaming soldier’s cheek even as he beat at it with his fists. His blood was bright and red in the diffused sunlight, a sudden splash of Technicolor in an otherwise black and white scene. McDaniels stared at it, transfixed for an instant, as the zombie ripped a huge chunk of flesh from the soldier’s face and chewed it hungrily, its face blank, expressionless, its rheumy eyes vacant and without any sign of intelligence. The corpse was wearing the remains of an expensive blue suit. Its white dress shirt was dappled with blood, and it had lost one expensive loafer. McDaniels had the impression the zombie had been a successful man in life.

  The soldier continued to struggle beneath the zombie, and he jerked his M4 into position as the corpse spread its jaws wide for another bite. A burst of gunfire blasted its skull apart, and the soldier tossed the grotesquerie aside as it collapsed on top of him. He then reached up to his mangled cheek with one hand, and explored the ragged hole torn there with his fingertips.

  “Oh Jesus,” Regina said, her voice small and barely audible above the din of combat and helicopters.

  The soldier looked at her, then at her father. His molars were visible through the rent in his face.

  “Can you help me?” he asked Safire, speaking as clearly as possible despite the wound.

  Safire shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. No.”

  The soldier’s face collapsed as a burst of bullets tore through his helmet and pulverized the skull beneath. McDaniels turned. Keith held his weapon at his shoulder. He walked toward the corpse, knelt, and pulled the rubber-edged dog tags from around its neck. He pocketed them, then rose to his feet and looked at McDaniels.

  “Let’s go, we’re pretty close now,” he said, before resuming his jog. If he was at all remorseful, he did not allow it to show. McDaniels followed, tugging Safire along.

  The two MH-60M Black Hawks were were surrounded by six ground security experts from the 160th. Several bodies lay around the two aircraft, some in uniform, most in other dress. Not all were zombies.

  “OMEN Team,” Keith told the first Night Stalker he came across. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve got two AMCITs that need to be hauled to MacArthur, on Long Island.”

  “Took you guys long enough, chief. Are any of you injured? Have any of you been bitten?” The tall, rawboned sentry looked from person to person, his Heckler & Koch MP5 held in both hands.

  “Negative. We’re all good,” Keith said.

  The sentry spoke into his helmet’s boom microphone and waved them toward the waiting Black Hawks. Keith turned to McDaniels.

  “Major, you go with the Safires in one ship,” he shouted over the roaring jet engines and slashing rotor blades. “You take your first sergeant and Leary and Rittenour. The rest of us will be in the second chopper. In case anything goes south, we’ll come in and extract you guys.”

  “Roger that, chief. Sine Pari, huh?” McDaniels said, throwing in the Special Forces Latin motto of Without Equal. A ghost of a smile flickered across Keith’s face, then he pointed to the men he wanted to accompany him and led them toward the second helicopter.

  “Let’s saddle up!” Gartrell shouted, and he pushed the Safires toward their Black Hawk. One of the crew chiefs helped them aboard and strapped them into the hard seats that ran the width of the helicopter’s troop compartment. Before returning to his own seat and the six-barreled M134 minigun mounted on an articulating cradle before it, he handed McDaniels a headset that was hardwired to the helicopter’s intercom system. McDaniels removed his headset and donned the new one.

  “This is Major McDaniels,” he said.

  “Major, this is Chief Warrant Officer Five Cox. We’ll be pulling pitch in just a moment, but I want to let you know that we’ll have to keep it at about 100 feet above ground. Our FLIR is messed up, and we can’t get it operational. Without that we can’t see through the smoke. So we’ll have to fly below the smoke layer. Understood?”

  “Roger that, chief. Do whatever you need to do, this is your aircraft and we’re only along for the ride.”

  “That guy with you—they say he might have a cure for this... this plague or whatever the hell it is. That true?”

  “That’s what they say. Any more than that, I don’t know.” McDaniels turned and checked Safire’s safety harness. He then placed his own helmet on Safire’s head and drew the chin strap tight.

  “Keep that on,” he said, shouting over the Black Hawk’s twin engines. He didn’t know if Safire heard him or not, but the scientist nodded, and that was good enough for McDaniels.

  The security perimeter collapsed as the ground control personnel retreated to the helicopters and climbed aboard. The timing was unfortunate. As they mounted the helicopters, another incursion of zombies cut through the assemble area. McDaniels saw them coming, approaching the second helicopter that carried CW3 Keith and the rest of OMEN Team.

  “Zeds to the right! Zeds to the right!” he shouted over the intercom while pulling his M4 into position. If he had to start shooting, he’d have to push the rifle past Safire and fill his lap with red-hot shell casings. He needn’t have worried; the crew chief leaned forward in his seat
, grabbed his M134’s A-frame handles, and fired a burst at the oncoming zombies. They literally exploded as the salvo of rounds ripped through them. McDaniels saw one decapitated head bounce across the grass and come to a rest face-up. Like a scene from a cheap horror movie, the dull eyes still moved, and the mouth repeatedly opened and closed.

  “We’re out of here!” the pilot said. He reached up to the overhead panel and fire-walled the engine condition levers. The Black Hawk’s twin turboshaft engines went from wail to a full-on scream as the helicopter’s main rotor picked up speed. The helicopter clawed its way into the air as the last of the security team threw themselves aboard. McDaniels watched as the second helicopter began to follow. As it grew light on its wheels, several shapes darted toward it from the left rear. The door gunner stood and spun his M134 to bear, but he couldn’t get it zeroed in time. Before McDaniels could do more than key his microphone button, the zombies threw themselves into the helicopter just as it lifted off. After a moment, its nose suddenly rose and tracked to the right before its main rotor lost thrust. The Black Hawk’s tail rotor disintegrated as it struck the ground, and the big helicopter rolled over and slammed back to the earth. Its rotors threw up sod and earth before they also fragmented. The helicopter spun around in a circle, and its tail boom fractured into three different pieces. It came to a sudden rest, and smoke rose from its engine cowlings.

  In the tree line, a ragged line of figures shambled toward the downed aircraft. More zombies, coming in for the kill.

  “We lost ROMEO Six-Two,” the pilot said over the intercom. “We’re a solo flight now, major.”