Finally, they were all assembled in the parking garage, and not a moment too soon. As they pushed the doors closed, the zombies apparently succeeded in shoving open the doors on a higher floor. The impacts made by the bodies slamming to the bottom of the elevator shaft was pure cacophony.
“Time’s up, we’re out of here!” McDaniels said.
“Leary, get on the door! There’s a pull-chain there that’ll open it up. When the van pulls past, you hop in the back!” Gartrell said, asserting himself without any deference to McDaniels. Leary bolted across the garage while Gartrell and Rittenour shepherded the others into the waiting van.
“I’ve got shotgun, major,” Gartrell said when McDaniels climbed into the front right seat.
“Think again, first sergeant,” McDaniels said, and slammed the door shut and buckled himself into the seat next to Finelly. Finelly gave him a quick grin and a thumbs-up as Gartrell oversaw the rest of the loading. McDaniels ignored both gestures.
“You know how to drive this thing?” he asked instead.
Finelly nodded. “Yup, drive something similar at Campbell. This one even has an automatic transmission and fulltime four wheel drive, so it’s gonna be a breeze.” He turned the key, and the big motor under the center cowling roared to life. Finelly nodded appreciatively when he heard the engine’s song.
“Ten cylinder engine, gas burner. Two tanks, both full. Damn major, this thing’s loaded for bear.”
“Let’s hope it’s what we need.”
Gartrell slammed the van’s side door closed and pulled open the rear doors, then ran to the garage door. He stood opposite Leary, and nodded to him.
“Ready?”
“Ready, first sergeant.” There was a furious pounding from the elevator door. The zombies were getting too close. Again.
“Van, ready?” Gartrell asked over the radio.
“Good to go here, first sergeant. Rittenour has security in the back of the vehicle, over,” McDaniels said.
Gartrell pointed at Leary. “Crack it open! I’ll secure the zone!”
“Here we go!”
Leary yanked the chain downward, and the solid garage door rose slowly a foot at a time. Beyond the door, darkness reigned, slashed by wet rain. Gartrell fell to his knees and peered under the slowly rising door.
“Good so far,” he reported. When the door had raised enough for him to duck under it, he darted out into the wet night, his AA-12 at the ready. “No zeds on the street just yet, but I can see ‘em gathering at the corner, must be where the entrance to the building is. They can’t hear the door being jacked open. Street’s empty, most of the traffic was already cleared when the barricades went up, so haul ass out of there as soon as you can and turn hard right.”
McDaniels relayed the information to Finelly, who stomped on the brake and dropped the van into drive. He didn’t flip on the headlights, relying on his NVGs to see with. The door rattled and shook as Leary cranked it up, his expression all hard lines as sweat rolled down his face. McDaniels mentally urged him on as the banging noises behind them became even more furious.
“Things’re gonna get through, man,” Derwitz said. He aimed his MP5 out the back of the van, mirroring Rittenour’s stance. The Safires and the Browns were buckled up in the bench seats in the van’s windowless interior, and young Zoe had her face buried against Regina’s breast. Regina cooed to her as comfortingly as she could, though her eyes were wild, full of fear. In direct counterpoint, Earl and Safire were almost pictures of calm, the former still stunned by the sudden death of his firstborn, the second probably too terrified to display any meaningful emotion. McDaniels knew how he felt, how they both felt.
The din outside the van seemed to reach a crescendo, and Rittenour epitomized it with two words: “Fight’s on.”
He started shooting. Zoe shrieked and buried herself against Regina as McDaniels spun in his seat. Through the van’s open rear doors, he saw the stenches push open the elevator doors. Dozens of them boiled out of the dark shaft, zeroing in on the idling van. Their pallid skin reflected the red glow of its brake lights. Rittenour fired his M4 on semi-automatic, cracking off head shot after head shot that left zombies collapsing to the oil-stained concrete floor. Derwitz was less precise, squeezing off bursts from his MP5 that did little to stop the advancing horde. McDaniels yelled for him to flip to semi and go for head shots, but if he heard, Derwitz did not comply.
“We’re attracting some attention from outside,” Gartrell reported.
“Gate’s up!” Leary cut in suddenly. “Major, get that fucking dumbass cowboy to jump on it!”
McDaniels looked at Finelly and found his attention was rooted to the vision of zombies swelling in the driver’s side view mirror. He slapped the big man on the arm mightily, jarring him out of his shocked silence.
“Finelly! Drive!”
Finelly snapped out of it and stomped down on the van’s accelerator. Rubber screeched as the four-wheel drive vehicle’s knobby tires spun across the smooth concrete for a moment before developing enough purchase to send it hurtling out into the rain-filled night. He cranked the wheel hard to the right just outside the garage, almost scraping the van’s side against the rear bumper of a car parked at the curb. As the vehicle came around and ground to a halt, McDaniels saw the car had a mass of parking tickets trapped beneath its windshield wipers, tickets that would go forever unpaid.
Gartrell and Leary sprinted for the van, the former firing several rounds from his AA-12 into the garage as he backpedaled through the rainy darkness. Leary launched himself into the van, then turned and grabbed the collar of Gartrell’s body armor and hauled him inside. Gartrell scooted backwards and sat inside the van’s cargo area, his legs hanging over its raised bumper.
“Go!” Leary shouted, as the first of the zombies came around the van’s open rear doors. Its head disappeared into an explosion of visceral goo as Gartrell blasted it with the automatic shotgun. Finelly slammed his foot on the accelerator once again, and the van fishtailed as it surged down the street. But not before a ghoul could grab onto Gartrell’s left boot, almost yanking him out of the van as it pulled away.
“Motherfuck!” Gartrell let go of the AA-12 and braced himself against the sudden weight as Leary grabbed onto him with both hands. The zombie pulled itself up as it was dragged behind the vehicle and bit down on the tip of Gartrell’s boot. It shook its head back and forth like a dog playing with a chew toy.
“Leary, hold on to me!” Gartrell shouted as his right hand reached for his holster. He pulled his pistol and fired at the zombie trying to devour his foot, steel-toed boot be damned. He missed with the first shot, and succeeded only in hitting it with a graze with the second. But the impact was enough to make the zombie open its mouth and reach upward with one hand. Gartrell raised his free leg and kicked the abomination in the face with his right foot. Bone crunched beneath the heavy sole of his boot, and the zombie slid away, rolling across the wet street. Leary and Rittenour hauled Gartrell inside, and they slammed the van’s rear doors shut. Gartrell leaned against the back of the seat the Safires and Browns sat on and wiped the rainwater from his face.
“Now that,” he said, “is what I call entertainment.”
The Escanaba reached her intended loiter position of north of Roosevelt Island at almost three in the morning. There was no way to drop a hook to hold her position, due to the occasional dead floating in the dark waters. Hassle instructed the sailor manning the con to maintain station using the boat’s diesel engines, something every swabbie had been trained to do if he was going to helm a vessel of any size in the Coast Guard. It was still a tall order; while the river current was generally north to south, the wind was pushing the Nob from the aft starboard quarter, and the air pressure was enough to make the ship’s stern swing out. The helmsman was adroit enough to feel the ship slipping out from under him, and he increased the output from the starboard engine to bring it back in line. It was a repetitive process, but Hassle was glad to see the job was
being handled competently.
“All lookouts, keep sharp. Watch for any of those things that might be trying to get aboard,” he told the bridge crew. “And let’s give those Special Forces guys a call on their frequency and let them know we’re here, and find out how long they’re going to make us wait in this crap.”
The van bolted down 79th Street, heading east as fast as Finelly could make it go. The wide thoroughfare was hardly vacant, despite the military and police blockades that had been designed to force evacuees onto only the north/south avenues, like Lexington behind them and Third Avenue ahead. But Finelly was able to weave the big van around the vehicles that had been halted on the street, including one bus which had crashed into a storefront, its long length blocking most of the road. To get around that, Finelly merely steered the vehicle onto the sidewalk, smashing through a pile of garbage bags as he did so. The windshield wipers snapped back and forth, slapping out a furious tempo as they fought to keep the windscreen clear.
“This thing’s got power, but it handles like a pig,” Finelly said. “It really must be armored, feels heavy as hell!”
As if to prove that, a zombie stepped in front of the van, its mouth open, its arms raised. McDaniels felt only the slightest shudder as the van crashed into the zed at thirty miles an hour.
“That worked out well,” Gartrell said from the back. “Keep doing that whenever you have the opportunity, Finelly.”
“You got it, first sergeant.”
A voice came over the Green Berets’ radio headsets. “Terminator Six, this is the Escanaba. We’re in position and waiting for you to get to the shoreline. We’re looking for an ETA, over.”
McDaniels smiled when he heard the voice on the other end of the radio link. “Escanaba, Terminator Six. We’re en route now. It’s going to be a while. Can’t give you an ETA, but I hope to God you’re going to wait for us, over.”
“Roger that, Terminator. We’ll hold station until you arrive, we’ve got plenty of fuel and hot coffee, over.”
“Save some for us, Escanaba. Got to go now, we’re about to try and cross Third Avenue. Terminator, out.” McDaniels said. “That was the Coast Guard boat. They’re on-station and waiting for us. All we have to do is get there,” he told the rest of the van’s occupants.
Finelly slowed the van as it approached Third Avenue. The barricade there had been deserted, but shapes still moved in the gloom. Several zombies turned toward the van as it hurtled up the street, their faces pale and drawn, eyes casting about wildly in their skulls. McDaniels realized they were almost entirely blinded by the night and the storm, but they still sensed a meal ticket was coming their way. Beyond the ghouls and the barricade, Third Avenue was choked with traffic, but there had been some sort of accident just south of the barricade, and that had let some of the traffic in the intersection thin out a bit before things went to hell in a hand basket.
“We going to be able to push our way through that?” McDaniels asked, pointing toward the intersection ahead.
“No way to know other than to give it a shot,” Finelly said. “Those zeds’ll be able to get all over us though.”
“No gun ports to shoot through,” McDaniels said, “and maybe it’s better if we don’t. The noise’ll bring every zombie in the area on top of us, even in the storm. Just do your best, Finelly.”
Finelly brought the van toward the intersection as quickly as he dared. The zombies stumbled toward the white vehicle, their moans overridden by the storm-driven wind. They slapped at the van, their fists bouncing off the reinforced metal. One of them managed to grab the handle on the driver’s door and yanked on it repeatedly, but the door locks had engaged automatically once the van’s speed increased over ten miles per hour. McDaniels told the soldiers in the back to ensure the rear doors were also locked.
Finelly pressed the van’s brush guards against the rear fender of a yellow taxi cab and gunned the engine. The van slowly pushed the taxi to one side, opening up the intersection just enough for the van to squeeze through. Finelly backed up a bit, ignoring the ghoul standing outside the driver’s door with its face pressed against the glass. He cut the wheel and brought the van around, then accelerated through the opening he’d created. The zombies howled as the van slipped away from them, and the one clinging to the driver’s door was torn away from the van as it brushed against the taxi.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Derwitz said, just before a rapid hammering sound came from the rear of the van.
“What was that?” Safire asked, suddenly coming alive now.
McDaniels checked the side view mirror and saw sparking flashes in the murk behind the van. The mirror suddenly exploded into shards of glass and plastic, and he flinched instinctively as debris ricocheted off the bullet-resistant window. The van’s rear end suddenly dipped and bounced on its suspension as one or both of the rear tires failed.
“Small arms fire,” McDaniels said. “Looks like OMEN is onto us.”
CHAPTER 26
“How’re we doing, Finelly?” McDaniels asked.
“Feels like we’ve got a flat,” Finelly said as he goosed the accelerator, pushing the van past another abandoned car. “Having a bit of trouble keeping to a straight line.”
“This crate’s got run-flat tires,” Rittenour said from the back.
“Yeah, but they ain’t designed to drive up on stopped vehicles and provide enough traction to push ‘em out of the way,” Gartrell said. “Major, we’re going to need something else to help us get through. Maybe some of us could dismount and push some vehicles out of the way...?”
“Sergeant Leary, you remember our discussion earlier?”
“Yes, sir.” Leary’s voice was flat and emotionless. “If we can find a fire engine or a snow plow or something, I’ll use it to push through the gridlock. You guys will have to keep the zeds off me long enough to get it done.”
“I think I see an NYPD tow truck up ahead at the next barricade,” Finelly said. “One of those six-by-six deals. There’s a fire truck, too.”
McDaniels leaned forward and saw the vehicles through the rain-swept gloom. He was not surprised to see figures moving among the abandoned vehicles, and they slowly turned toward the van as it bore down on the intersection.
“Second Avenue up ahead. Okay Leary, you’re on. Finelly, stop about fifty yards from the barricade. Leary and I will advance, clear the area as quickly as we can, and secure the tow truck. Leary, I’ll do my damnedest to keep the zeds off you while you do your thing. Don’t fuck around, make it quick and dirty.”
“Hooah,” Leary said, and McDaniels heard him shifting around in the back of the van.
“Rittenour, Gartrell, Derwitz—you dismount as well and provide security for the van until it can move again. Exit through the side door, and remember, OMEN’s at our rear. Expect to be engaged, so don’t just stand around and make yourselves a target. Reduce your silhouette as much as possible.”
“I think we all remember our basic soldiering skills, major,” Gartrell said.
“Prove it to me,” McDaniels said as Finelly brought the van to a halt. He unfastened his seat belt and pushed open the passenger door, his M4 at the ready. Behind him, the rest of the troops piled out of the side door and found themselves confronted by two zombies that stumbled toward them from the sidewalk. Leary fired two shots and dropped them in their tracks with practiced efficiency. As Gartrell led the other soldiers to the rear of the van, McDaniels and Leary sprinted toward the barricade. There were six or seven zombies between them and the tow truck. McDaniels shouldered his M4, flipped on the laser designator, and fired on them, taking his time to ensure each shot resulted in a kill. The zombies obviously knew they were there, but the driving rain and the total darkness had them at a disadvantage, whereas McDaniels and the rest of the soldiers had night vision devices that gave them more than just a slight edge. Bodies fell to the wet pavement with almost metronomic regularity. In seconds, the path to the tow truck was clear.
“Cover
me,” Leary said, and he advanced toward the dark rig with his sidearm in both hands. If something went down, he wouldn’t be able to use his assault rifle effectively. McDaniels shadowed him, and took down two more ghouls as they stepped around a police cruiser.
From behind him, more gunfire rang out. A distant assault rifle chattered on full automatic, and McDaniels heard projectiles slam into the idling van.
“Six, OMEN is advancing on us,” Gartrell reported over the radio. “A block back, but they’re using full auto fire to fix us in place. I count four shooters, two of which are using NVGs. I’m popping smoke, but it’s not going to hold them back for long. Move your ass, Leary!”
Leary did not answer as he ran to the tow truck and threw the driver’s door open. McDaniels scanned the area for more targets, his M4 at the ready. He heard a faint moan over the wind, and was surprised to find a zombie had closed to less than three feet from him. As he spun to deal with it, the ghoul lunged forward and grabbed his arm. McDaniels let go his rifle and slammed his gloved fist into its face with all his strength. The sudden burst of adrenaline gave the punch much more authority than he had thought it would have, and the ghoul’s head snapped back as it fell to the street. McDaniels put on boot on its chest and fired a single round through its head, blasting its skull apart. He turned back to the tow truck and saw Leary had hauled himself into its cab. Three zombies advanced upon the vehicle, and McDaniels stepped toward them, firing shot after shot. Two of them went down, but the hit the third zed in the shoulder, an ineffective shot. It came around the truck’s open door and clambered onto the running board as Leary searched about the cab’s interior. McDaniels found he no longer had a clear shot.
“Leary!” McDaniels shouted.
Leary responded immediately. He put his left hand against the zombie’s chest and brought his pistol up in his right. The single round he fired left a deep furrow through the ghoul’s skull, and it toppled off the running board.
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