by James Cook
Fuck your hearing! A shrill voice shouted in my head. Run, you idiot!
I ran.
THIRTY-SIX
There is nothing fun about a running fight.
Bullets fly back and forth, and you’re never quite sure who fired the one that just whipped past your ear close enough to feel the turbulence of its wake and smell the vapor trail. You serpentine as you run, praying your movements are erratic enough to throw off anyone aiming at you, and when you’ve passed far enough behind the people laying down covering fire for you, you skid to a halt, find the best cover you can, try to remember how many rounds are left in your magazine, and start firing at anything pointing a gun in your direction.
We formed three groups: Hopper’s fighters, Gellar’s SEALs, and my team, which was led, ostensibly, by Grabovsky. Although at the moment Grabovsky’s leadership consisted of the same activity as the rest of us—trying not to get his ass shot off.
We leapfrogged each other as we ran down the mountain, breaking up into fire teams and forcing our pursuers to divide their forces. On two occasions the enemy grenadiers tried lobbing grenades at us, but their ordnance succeeded only in rebounding off the thick stands of trees and exploding closer to the ROC troops than to us. After the second shot, they got the picture and stuck to sending hot lead at us.
About the fourth or fifth time it was my team’s turn to stand and fight while the others ran, one of Hopper’s men faltered in his steps, went down, and did not get up. Hopper yelled at him, but the man didn’t move. A steadily expanding pool of blood stained the ground beneath him, slowly running downhill.
“He’s gone, Hopper,” Grabovsky shouted. “Get your ass moving.”
Hopper cursed violently, sent a volley of fire toward the ROC troops, and moved.
Now I was pissed. These ROC assholes had no right to be here. They had done nothing but commit atrocities since they’d arrived, and now they’d killed a man fighting to defend his home. The fear that had gripped me when that RPK first rattled back at the ridgeline left me. A coldness started in my stomach, spread to my chest and face, and steadied the muscles in my hands. There was no more shaking, no more panicked breathing. I took position a few feet behind a thick oak tree. A tree won’t always stop a bullet, and taking cover close to one cuts off your field of view. Better to hang back a few feet and hope the wood withstands any bullets that come your way.
Two deep breaths settled me enough to steady my aim. The ROC troops were less than a hundred yards behind us. They came on with the hot-blooded zeal of hunters with their prey on the run. We’d whittled them down by a few, but they still outnumbered us two to one.
I raised my rifle and tracked a man carrying an RPK. He was short, maybe five foot seven and perhaps a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. He had the characteristic high cheekbones and dark hair and eyes of people from the Korean Peninsula. He looked like he might have been twenty years old. Maybe.
Christ’s sake, it’s been five years since the Outbreak. How young do they recruit these guys?
Not that it mattered. However old he was, this was the end of the line for him. I didn’t care if he had joined the KPA voluntarily or not. I didn’t care if he took issue with the things his forces had done or if he’d reveled in them. All that mattered was he was on one side, I was on the other, and if I gave him half a chance, he’d put a bullet in my head and keep right on running. In this situation, high-minded notions of mercy did not apply.
The SCAR kicked me in the shoulder and the bullet took him low in his chest. He screamed, fell, thrashed, and clutched at the place where he’d been shot, eyes bulging in pain and disbelief. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but the plaintive tone was clear enough.
His RPK had flown from his hands when he went down and now lay ten feet down the slope from where he lay. I could have put another bullet in him to end his suffering, but I didn’t. Cold logic dictated doing so was unnecessary. I had limited ammo, and he was out of the fight anyway. Furthermore, he was already dead, he just didn’t know it yet. Where the bullet had struck was a complex junction of arteries and major organs. Even if the bullet and its wound channel hadn’t destroyed his heart, he’d bleed out internally in short order.
Let him scream, I told myself. Screams of dying comrades are demoralizing, and we need all the help we can get.
To my right, Gabe squeezed off two shots. Another soldier hit the dirt face first, the top of his head a bloody, ragged mess. Beyond Gabe, Tyrel opened up with his IAR, forcing the troops on his side of the line to hit their bellies and scramble for cover. I saw a rifleman skid to a halt behind a tree and take aim in Tyrel’s direction. I put the reticle on his head and pulled the trigger. Half of his cranium was missing when his corpse slumped to the ground.
“Charlie, fall back,” Gellar radioed.
I had a bead on one more troop. Out of pure meanness, I put a bullet low in his guts. He would die, but he would be long in doing it and his dying would be pure agony.
Fuck him. Fuck all of ‘em.
I fell back, making sure not to run in a predictable pattern. As I ran, my earpiece came to life.
“Sorry to say this fellas,” Grabovsky said breathlessly, “but I’m out of ammo.”
“I got the team,” Gabe said. “Head back to the trucks. Get that RPG ready.”
“Can fucking do.”
Now we were three. I had ninety rounds left on my vest and twelve in the mag in my rifle. After that, I would be headed back to the trucks myself.
The rest of the journey down the long hill was a blur. I ran, I swerved, I counted steps when I passed Hopper’s team, and when the time was right, I turned and picked off as many troops as I could—which wasn’t many—before Gellar ordered the three of us to fall back. Tyrel informed us he was down to his last magazine. I still had sixty rounds left.
“Gabe, how are you on ammo?” I asked.
“Forty for my SCAR,” he said. “But I got an M-4 on my back and sixty rounds for it.”
“Roger. That should get us back to the trucks.”
“Let’s hope so. Make ‘em count.” Gabe’s rifle cracked less than two seconds later.
I spared a glance behind me. The slope was beginning to flatten out, meaning we were only a few hundred yards away from the trucks now. We were in range of the heavy weapons, but too far away for them to do us much good. There were a lot of trees in the way, and even if there weren’t, the enemy was too close behind us for the machine guns and grenades to force them back without risking hitting our own people. Hence the term ‘danger close’.
The two-mile trip up the hill had taken an hour because we were being cautious, taking our time, and moving up a steep slope. But on the flight back to the trucks we were sprinting full-out, hopped up on adrenaline, and going downhill, a factor which lends speed to even the slowest of runners.
We’d been going for maybe fifteen minutes, and salvation was now close at hand. I was tired, sweating through my clothes, and my skin had turned red from overheating, but being in close proximity to escape was enough to lend strength to my tired legs.
Scanning up the hill, I estimated there were as many as thirty enemy soldiers still in pursuit. We’d racked up quite a score in this fight, and as far as I knew, had only lost one man. But that could change quickly if the enemy caught up to us.
To my right, I heard the chatter of Tyrel’s IAR. He chewed through his last magazine in short bursts, forcing the enemy troops to take cover again. The pause in their progress allowed Gabe and me to pick targets and put bullets into them. I got two and Gabe hit one and missed another. But only by about an inch, and only because the target was on the run.
“I’m out,” Tyrel said over the comms net. “See you at the rally point, amigos.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him sprint down the hill. Good luck, I told him silently. And don’t look back.
“In position,” Gellar radioed. “Fall back, Charlie.”
“Moving,” Gabe replied. I t
ook one last shot that found its mark low. A grenadier howled and fell over clutching his groin. I grinned savagely and took off down the hill.
Die screaming, motherfucker.
Shots rang out as Gellar covered our retreat. As we ran, I realized there were shots ringing out from beyond Gellar’s position as well.
What the hell?
The slope flattened the further I went and the trees began to thin out. I quickened my pace, ran around the side of a thick maple, and laughed triumphantly as I saw the trucks come into view.
And ran headlong into a tall Gray ghoul.
In the instant before we collided, I had half a second to bring up my SCAR in a two handed grip and hit the ghoul in the throat. After that, we were a tangle of living and dead limbs as we tumbled down the remaining slope. We had rolled maybe twenty feet when our progress was suddenly and jarringly arrested by the trunk of a cedar tree. Unfortunately, it was my back that hit the tree and stopped us rolling.
The ghoul was inches from my face, its terrifyingly strong fingers ripping into my shoulders. I screamed with my jaw clenched, spittle flying from between my teeth, and pushed the SCAR against its throat, keeping the creature’s snapping maw at bay.
I was in trouble. I’d had the wind knocked out of me when I hit the tree, and it was only sheer mad-dog meanness that had kept me from dying in the first few seconds afterward. I was holding the ghoul off for the moment, but that wouldn’t last. My strength would eventually wear out—the ghoul’s would not. That is, by far, the worst thing about ghouls. They never, ever get tired.
I needed to do something, and I needed to do it quick.
As my lungs figured out how to breathe again, it occurred to me the ghoul was lying across my body. Back in my youth, when my father had me taking Brazilian jiu jitsu classes, we would have called this position ‘side control’. I sincerely doubted the ghoul on top of me knew jiu jitsu, which gave me an advantage. But only for a short window of time.
On day one of any jiu jitsu class, the first thing you learn is how to move your hips while lying underneath an opponent, otherwise known as the hip escape. Once you’ve moved your hips away from your opponent and turned your torso toward him, you can begin working on either pulling guard, sweeping him over, escaping, or taking his back.
At the moment, I was far more concerned with escape. There isn’t a ghoul in the world that will succumb to a chokehold, so taking its back was useless. Not to mention the fact it would take every ounce of strength I had to stay on its back and keep it from turning around and biting me. Its grip on my shoulders would make sweeping it an exercise in futility, and pulling guard would be flat-out suicide. My best option was to get away from the thing, create distance, and put a bullet in its head.
I planted both heels into the ground, bridged up with my hips, and turned my chest toward the ghoul, keeping the rifle between us as I did. The movement pulled my torso from underneath it, causing it to fall face-first onto the ground. It wasn’t much, but it gave me the few precious seconds I needed to release my rifle and get to my feet.
One of the ghoul’s hands slipped free as I stood up, but the other maintained its grip. I’d been in this situation before and knew how to handle it. I grabbed the outside of its palm with both hands, planted one boot on its face to keep it pinned to the ground, wrenched it’s wrist sideways with everything I had, and leaned forward using my thigh as a fulcrum. The elbow snapped and the hand came loose. Now I was free.
I hopped back two steps and drew my Beretta. The ghoul began rising to its feet, its skeletal mouth open in a permanent, macabre grin. I put the barrel of the pistol against its forehead and pulled the trigger. The back of its head exploded, spraying the tree I had been lying against only seconds ago with black gore. Some of the ichor splattered my rifle.
Goddammit. Is anything gonna go right today?
I holstered my sidearm, picked the SCAR up by the buttstock and part of the handguard not covered in ghoul sludge, and ran as fast as I could toward the trucks.
On the way, more ghouls appeared out of the forest. Not good. Now I understood why there was gunfire coming from the trucks despite the fact the KPA troops were not in range yet. I cursed myself for an idiot. I should have known the sounds of combat would attract every ghoul for miles. Even a single gunshot is like ringing a dinner bell for the rotten bastards. A pitched battle is akin to setting out an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a good thing we had the trucks. Otherwise, I’m not sure we would have been able to make it out of that valley alive, even without the KPA troops in pursuit.
I had been living too soft, I decided. Spending too much time in places where the infected had been eradicated or defenses had been erected to keep them at bay. It amazed me how easy it was to lose the old habits that had kept me alive for so long in the wastelands. If I survived the next few minutes, it was a deficiency I intended to correct.
I didn’t dare bring the SCAR up to my face for fear of getting ghoul blood in my eyes, but I still had my pistol. Carrying the SCAR in my left hand, I drew my pistol with my right and slowed my run to a brisk jog. The ghouls were widely spread out, no doubt because of the close proximity of trees in the forest, so I didn’t anticipate having to shoot more than a handful before reaching the trucks.
Behind me, I heard the thump of grenades going off. I have heard a lot of grenades detonate since joining the Army. There is a difference in sound between the frag and concussion grenades used by Union forces and the little green balls used by the ROC and their marauder friends. The explosions behind me were definitely US made. Gellar had most likely let the KPA troops close to within throwing distance, tossed every frag grenade they had to force the enemy into cover, and were now beating feet toward the trucks.
I exited the treeline, dropped two ghouls in my path, and ran the last few yards to the trucks. Hopper’s men were already there, one of them on the M-240, one on the MK-19, and the rest, including Tyrel, shooting calmly at the approaching horde of undead. In the third truck, Grabovsky crouched in the bed, the RPG launcher on his shoulder and a bag of rockets beside him. His gaze was intensely focused toward the approaching KPA troops. He reached down, picked up a box of ammo, and held it in my direction.
“Give us a hand with these ghouls,” he said.
I gently placed my SCAR and rucksack in the bed of the truck. “I need an M-4.”
“Take mine.” Grabovsky handed me his rifle.
I took a moment to look it over. It was obviously a custom job: eighteen inch mid-weight free-floated barrel; ambidextrous charging handle, safety, and mag release; hand-machined muzzle brake, battery assist lever, and trigger guard; match-grade trigger; fifteen-inch aluminum quad rail; rifle-length gas system; A2 post removed in lieu of a low-profile adjustable gas block; folding BUIS; foregrip mounted under the lower picatinny rail; and what appeared to be a short length of bicycle inner-tube stretched around the pistol grip. The six-position stock was aftermarket—Magpul by the look of it—and the optic was a VCOG identical to the one I owned. This was not the weapon of a grunt. This was a custom built sniper carbine. I could only imagine what modifications Grabovsky had made to the internals.
There was a PEQ-15 laser sight mounted on the forward part of the rail. I tried the grip. The rubber inner-tube thickened it and gave it a firmer, more secure hold. I’d have to remember that trick.
“This thing zeroed?”
Grabovsky glared at me. “The fuck you talking to?”
“Question withdrawn.”
I took the box of ammo and the three empty magazines Grabovsky offered from his vest. The ammo in the can was loaded on ten-round stripper clips. Like many infantry guys I know, I keep a stripper clip guide on me at all times. I affixed it to the first magazine, bent out the little brass tab on the edge of the stripper clip, slid the clip into the guide, put the bottom of the magazine against my chest, and pulled. Half a second later, ten rounds loaded. I repeated the process until all three mags were ready to go. The entire procedure t
ook less than a minute.
During that time, Gabe and Gellar’s team emerged from the treeline, dropping infected as they went. I wondered briefly what had taken Gabe so long, then figured he had probably stayed behind to help cover the SEALs’ retreat. If I’d been a little less selfish, and a little less stupid, I would have thought to do the same. I intended to apologize to all parties involved if I lived long enough.
Gabe and the SEALs had the advantage of superior speed on their pursuers, and had put more than a hundred yards between them by the time they exited the treeline. To my left, Hopper spoke into a handset wired to a loudspeaker on his truck set to an earsplitting volume.
“Get down! Do it now!”
Our guys did not hesitate. They hit the ground face first and covered their heads with their arms. The KPA troops chasing them saw them go down, and almost in unison, looked up to see the trucks and the heavy weapons aimed at them. I imagine they had about a second and a half to think ‘oh shit!’, or the Korean equivalent, and realize they had been duped before the M-240 and MK-19 opened fire.
At least eight of them died in the initial volley. Grabovsky sent rocket after rocket among them, wisely blasting trees and showering them with shrapnel and falling timbers. RPGs are designed to destroy vehicles, so they aren’t the best weapons to use against men spread out on a hillside. But Grabovsky’s tactic of aiming at trees created a devastating effect. The troops on the hill had no place to hide.
I tore my gaze from the carnage and scanned where Gabe and Gellar’s men waited for the explosions and flying bullets to stop. The KPA soldiers were not the only threat they faced. The infected had spotted Gabe and company and were shambling in their direction, heedless of the bullets and grenades flying toward the hillside. Many of them were torn apart by machine gun fire but continued their struggles nonetheless.
