Storm of Ghosts (Surviving the Dead Book 8)

by James Cook

I closed the door and began packing my gear. When I was done, I opened a drawer on my bedside table and took out two dossiers. The other members of my team had copies as well, including the SEALs who had been briefed separately. I studied the faces in the various pictures, trying to commit them to memory so I could recognize the subjects from any angle when I saw them. I had been looking at the pictures every day since receiving them, but memory is an unreliable thing. It is best to keep important information at the front of the mind. As my father used to tell me, repetition is the mother of all learning.

  I reread their files, then I studied the pictures again. If I did nothing else tomorrow night, I was going to find these two. And one way or another, by dawn the following morning, they were going to be in Union custody.

  Either that, or I would die trying.

  *****

  Things move slowly in the military until it’s time to destroy something. Then things move very quickly indeed.

  I showed up early for the ops briefing. It was two hours of reiterating things we already knew, rehashing attack plans that had already been studied ad nauseam, and assessing data from intel reports we had all read and discussed extensively. The only new takeaway was the AIM-38 virus had already been airdropped over the target areas. By the time we arrived, the KPA troops guarding the prisoners would, presumably, be too sick to fight. Nevertheless, we were reminded to be on the lookout for troops and enemy officers that may have received the Chinese version of the inoculant, assuming they had actually made any.

  In short, it was a review before the final exam.

  There is usually a part of me that is apprehensive about going into combat. The battle lust does not typically kick in until the bullets start flying. Beforehand, my sense of logic is in the fullness of its power and warning me of the potential consequences. But not this time. There was no fear, no nervousness, no anxiety. I was ready to be done with this shit. I wanted those prisoners safe, inoculated, and on their way to rebuilding their lives. I wanted the KPA dead and buried. I wanted to find the people General Jacobs had tasked my team with capturing and get them on a helicopter back to the Springs.

  Mostly, though, I just wanted to see Miranda again.

  The briefing ended and everyone involved in the mission spent the evening preparing and re-preparing their gear, weapons, and minds. I deliberately stayed awake until two in the afternoon the next day so I could get a solid ten hours of sleep before assembling topside with the rest of the team.

  I woke up at midnight, ate an increasingly rare MRE of unknown age, and drank three liters of water. Then I rounded up my gear and followed Gabe, Tyrel, and Grabovsky out of the bunker to the staging area. To my surprise, Mike was already there, looking incongruous in full combat gear with his shock of graying hair and silver beard.

  “You coming with us?” I asked.

  “Goddamn right I am,” he said. “I started this thing, and I’m gonna see it through to the end.”

  “We’re glad to have you,” Tyrel said, patting his old friend on the shoulder. Mike gave him a tight smile.

  The SEALs comprising our support detachment were there as well, along with close to a hundred Resistance fighters and more than a dozen special operations personnel. I recognized Sergeant Hathaway and nodded to him. He saluted me as I passed, and it took me a moment to remember that I was an officer now and was supposed to return the salute. I did, and I think I even managed to make it look casual. If I didn’t, Hathaway had the good grace not to laugh at me.

  General Jacobs did not show up. Orders came over the comms net as to which team was supposed to wait where for pickup. Ours was told to wait in a forest clearing half a kilometer from the bunker. Grabovsky consulted his tablet. After a minute, he closed the cover and slipped it into his pack.

  “Come on,” he said, setting out northward. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

  *****

  While waiting in the tall grass of a meadow in the middle of the night, I had a chance to ask Mike if he’d ever found his wife.

  “I did,” he said, his face going blank. “Made it to her family’s place about six weeks after I left the Springs. Place was trashed. Bloodstains, broken windows, doors smashed in, you know what it’s like. Infected had been there. I spent the next two weeks searching the surrounding area. Finally found her with a bunch of other infected trying to get to some poor fella they’d trapped on the roof of a gas station.”

  “Jesus, Mike. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Wasn’t anything unexpected. I led the horde away, found some high ground, took aim at what used to be my wife, and did what I had to do. Then I went back and found the guy trapped on the gas station. You’ve met him. He’s the coordinator for the teams in Washington.”

  “Romero?”

  “Yep.”

  Grabovsky waved an impatient hand at us. “Quiet a minute,” he said. He pressed his headphones against his ears. Smith, who had volunteered to be our radioman, squatted next to him, scanning the treeline with his NVGs.

  We crouched in the clearing, waiting for word from Grabovsky. Each of us had a rucksack, body armor, and a full loadout of weapons and gear, including breaching charges. We also carried one LAW rocket per man, a single Carl Gustaf M3 recoilless rifle for the squad, and two crates with six shells each for the M3. Hemingway and Chavez would be the M3 team. Chavez would carry three shells, with the rest of his team dividing up the remainder among them. I was glad I wasn’t asked to help. My gear was already heavy enough; I wasn’t in a hurry to add to it.

  “You’ve got the star shells,” I heard Gellar tell Smith and Miller while they were distributing the M3 munitions. “Don’t lose ‘em. We might need ‘em later.”

  “Aye, aye, Master Chief,” they both replied.

  I muttered quietly to Mike, “Fucking Navy and their weird-ass language.”

  Mike looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Who the hell says ‘aye, aye’? Seriously, it’s like no one told them we won the war against the British and they still think they’re fighting for King George.”

  That got a laugh out of the old man. It felt good to hear it. “Believe me, that’s the least weird of their traditions. Ever heard of the shellback initiation?”

  “No. What’s that?”

  “Weird. That’s what it is.”

  “You assholes know I can hear you, right?” Tyrel said.

  Mike smiled at him. “Am I saying anything that ain’t true?”

  Tyrel glared a moment, then looked away. “No.”

  “Hey, you hear that?” Hemingway said.

  Everyone went quiet, straining their ears. After a few seconds, I heard the distinctive whump-whump-whump-whump of helicopters. Lots of them. Strangely, I had a vivid memory of the scene from Apocalypse Now where the Hueys are flying toward the Vietnamese beach and Robert Duvall is arguing with someone about whether heavy or light surfboards are better, and when they get close to shore, they start playing Ride of the Valkyries over a set of loudspeakers. And all the while, Martin Sheen is calmly looking around and chewing gum while the air cavalry start blowing up a Viet Cong village. At that moment, I felt like Captain Willard in that scene: calm, collected, and ready to kill something. Although perhaps without the same destructive sense of ennui. Not anymore, at least. There was a time.

  One of the helicopters veered in our direction, circled the meadow, saw our IR patches, and descended a safe distance away. When it landed, one of the crew chiefs opened the door and waved at us to approach. I put on my combat goggles and braved the rotor wash and lashing, waist-high grass on the way to the Blackhawk. Gabe and Mike went in front of me while everyone else followed behind.

  Between the eleven of us and the two crew chiefs, it was somewhat of a squeeze. I told myself it could have been worse. Eleven men in full combat kit and four aircrew, including pilots, is about as much as Blackhawks are built for. They can hold fourteen in a pinch, but you have to drop some gear to do it. As it was, there were only thirteen
people in the cargo area and the two pilots up front.

  The Blackhawk’s rotors began to spin faster. We clipped our harnesses to the anchors recessed in the helicopter’s deck and tried not to move around too much. We were equipped to rappel out of the bird, and looking around, I saw there were two lines set up on each of the two open sliding doors. I wondered how we were going to manage that when we barely had enough room to move.

  Very carefully, my father’s voice told me.

  I remembered being twelve years old the first time he took me up in Black Wolf Tactical’s helicopter and had me rappel out of it.

  “It’s just like going down the practice skid,” he told me beforehand. “Just slide down the rope like you’ve done a thousand times.”

  It was most certainly not just like going down the practice skid. There was rotor wash, and incredible noise, and wind tossing the helicopter around, and it seemed as though we were impossibly high in the air even though it was only a hundred feet. I almost chickened out, but then I saw my father staring at me expectantly, his gaze unyielding, his mouth a thin, sharp line. His eyes locked with mine and he stabbed a finger toward the ground.

  I had just recently read The Gunslinger by Stephen King, and Roland Deschain’s poignant rebuke sprang to mind:

  You have forgotten the face of your father.

  So I clenched my teeth, screwed up my courage, and kicked off. Once I got going, it was actually pretty easy. I hit the ground, disengaged my harness, and when I looked skyward to give my dad a thumbs up, I was grinning so hard my face hurt.

  As I remembered this, it occurred to me I had never been through any kind of training in the Army to prepare me for rapelling from a helicopter. Nonetheless, General Jacobs obviously had confidence I could do it. Which meant someone had been talking about me, and I was pretty sure I knew who. I glanced in Mike’s direction and decided my recruitment into the general’s service no longer seemed quite so coincidental. Not for the first time, I had the feeling of larger, unseen forces moving around me and bearing me along in their wake like leviathans in a murky ocean. I did not care for it.

  The flight was short. When we reached our destination two miles from the internment camp, the crew chiefs helped us attach our harnesses to the ropes. Gellar and Grabovsky went first, rapelling down the port side, while Gabe and Mike exited from starboard. When they hit the ground they held the ropes for the next man on rappel, one of those next men being me. I landed next to Gabe, detached from the rope, and helped him steady the line. In less than two minutes we were all on the ground. Above us the helicopter wheeled southward, gained altitude, and flew away into the pitch black sky.

  I looked around. Through the grainy image of my NVGs, I saw we were in a forested area where the trees were spaced widely apart. Looking north, I could see the forest grew thicker in that direction.

  Grabovsky checked his tablet. Mike stepped next to him and studied the screen.

  “Where we at?” he asked.

  “We’re clear to move within half a klick. General Jacobs wants us to find a good vantage point and stand by until the other teams are in place.”

  Mike looked around at the assembled operators. “You heard the man. Let’s move out. We ain’t got all night.”

  “Yes sir,” came the reply, in unison.

  FORTY

  “By the way,” I said to Grabovsky as we walked toward the prison camp. “How are we on infected?”

  “Not as bad as we could be,” he said. “The prison camp is loud, but secure. There’ll be ghouls when we get close, but it should be clear until we get there.”

  “Anything on satellite?”

  “Satellites only see large hordes. If it’s less than twenty or thirty they can go unnoticed. Especially if they’re spread out.”

  “Which they will be in the woodlands.”

  “Yep. Once we reach the clearing they’ll be bunched up, but that’s a whole other problem.”

  “I imagine our good friend Carl Gustaf can help with that.”

  Grabovsky actually smiled a little. “I bet he can.”

  We took our time trekking through the forest. It was a dark night with a cloudy sky overhead and rain in the forecast for the next morning. The last thing we needed was to run into a horde and have to waste time and ammo fighting our way clear. Or even worse, having to abort. I’d kill the ghouls with a damn rock if I had to. I was not failing this mission.

  When we were a mile out, the tell-tale groan of undead drifted to us through the forest. We all stopped, circled up, and scanned our surroundings. A low fog was drifting in, and it was getting difficult to see more than thirty feet or so.

  “Switching to thermal,” Gabe said.

  Hearing him say it reminded me my night vision scope had a thermal setting as well. I flipped up my NVGs, switched it over, and scanned for infected. Unlike living people, who show up bright white in an IR imager, ghouls show up as a shadow among the gray background. They’re hard to spot when they stand still, so one has to look for movement.

  “Got six coming in on my side,” Gabe said.

  “Two here,” Miller said.

  I scanned again and saw movement. After a few seconds, I had a count. “Four my way.”

  “Anybody else?” Grabovsky said.

  He got a round of negatives.

  “Good. At least there ain’t many of them. Switch to hand weapons.”

  Grabovsky, Tyrel, Mike, and the SEALs drew MK 9 ghoul choppers. Gabe produced his elegant falcata. I slid my M-4 around to my back, flipped down my NVGs, and unsheathed my fighting knife and a machete I’d requisitioned from the bunker. I had sharpened the machete with a set of steel files I’d borrowed from the bunker’s armory, and while it wasn’t a MK 9, it was good enough to get the job done.

  Hemingway looked over at me. “Where’s your MK 9?”

  “Didn’t bring one.”

  “They didn’t have any at the bunker?”

  I gave him a flat stare, the effect of which was lost behind my goggles. “If they did, don’t you think I would have brought it?”

  “Hey, don’t get pissed at me. I’m not the one that told you to leave your chopper behind.”

  I opened my mouth to give a sharp reply, but Mike cut us off. “You two wanna shut up? We got incoming.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, shutting my mouth. Hemingway did the same.

  “Lowell, you’re on anchor,” Gellar said.

  “Got it.” Lowell activated his PEQ-15 laser sight, which produces a sharply focused beam visible only through NVGs. If any of us got into trouble, Lowell would bail them out. But only as a last resort. Even suppressed, M-4s make a lot of noise. We couldn’t afford that right now.

  “These fuckers on our side are closer,” Grabovsky said. “Move in on ‘em by twos, then we’ll hit the rest. Hicks, Hemingway, you two watch our six.”

  “Roger that,” I said. Hemingway acknowledged as well.

  I tied my scarf around my mouth. The NVGs would protect my eyes, although I might have to wipe down the lenses after this.

  The squad paired up and moved in. If the sight of eleven armed men heading in their direction alarmed the ghouls in question, they did not show it. Their progress remained steady as they lurched toward us. I noticed they were all Grays.

  “Probably heard the helicopter,” I said. “Came looking for a snack.”

  “Shouldn’t there be more, then?” Hemingway asked.

  “Not if they got distracted by the noise coming from the prison camp. Probably turned around after the bird left and went back the way they came. These shitheads must have gotten close enough to hear us walking in. Grays move faster than other ghouls.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Hemingway said. “Heard they can heal too.”

  “They can. I’ve seen it.”

  “Fuck’s sake. What’s next, ghouls that can run and climb?”

  “Christ, don’t even say it. They learn to do that, the human race can hang it up.”

  Our convers
ation ended when Miller decapitated a ghoul with a powerful backswing. Gabe went to work on Miller’s left side, a swipe of his falcata sending a diagonal section of cranium spinning one way and a body falling the other. Hemingway and I turned in the direction of the other ghouls. Lowell stood close to us, hanging back so he could get a clear shot if anyone got into trouble.

  The two Grays Miller spotted were moving in fast. They must have been well fed; the usual two-to-three mile an hour shuffle was absent. These two were moving at a brisk walk, almost the speed of a slow jog.

  “I’ll take left,” I said.

  “Got the other one.” Hemingway took a two-handed grip on his MK 9 and moved in.

  The Gray coming toward me had not been a large man in life. At least I didn’t think so—it’s hard to tell after they shed their skin. All the putrefied fat goes with it. What stared at me was a scrawny nightmare of exposed muscle tissue, wide lidless eyes, and a gaping, skeletal mouth full of gnashing teeth. The face around the mouth was stained black with the gore of its last meal, and its fingers were bent into outstretched hooks. The urge was strong to say fuck it and shoot the damn thing, but I resisted.

  When it drew close, I kept my dagger low and away from my torso, sidestepped, and lashed out with the machete. The ghoul’s right arm fell to the ground, severed at mid bicep. When it turned to face me, I push-kicked it in the chest, knocking it back a few steps. It recovered quickly and came at me again. This time I dodged the other way and cut off its left arm, then danced backward to give myself space. The ghoul was undeterred. I was reminded of the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the black knight. I giggled thinking about it, despite the severity of the situation.

  “It’s only a flesh wound,” I muttered as I push-kicked the ghoul again, slipped around to its left side, and chopped into the back of its neck. The blow severed its spinal cord and the ghoul slumped to the ground. It was disabled now, but it wasn’t dead. As long as the brain was intact, it would remain in its undead state. I solved that problem via a carefully aimed stab with my fighting dagger. The blade slid neatly into the eye socket and scraped against the back of the creature’s skull. I gave the knife a twist and pulled it free.