It was then that the floor beneath them shook, support girders creaking and straining to hold the weight, but the constant erosion of water over two years had left it all rotted, weak, and ready to fail… and to collapse. One moment, two dozen dead were staggering across the room toward the Marines, and the next, the floor opened up and swallowed them. The still-moving corpses fell into the void that appeared beneath them, as collapsing masonry, carpeting, and rotten furniture plummeted fifteen feet and hit the floor below with a deafening crash.
Jameson leaned back and waited, heart thumping, for more of the building to fall down around him, memories of the building collapse in Canterbury flashing through his mind… but it didn’t happen. He looked down and found he now had a perfect view of the level below the collapsed one – another large room, this one mostly white, and filled with benches and various machines that actually did look like lab equipment.
Nice one, he thought.
On the other hand, many of the dead that had dropped down there were already clambering to their feet and glaring and hissing upward.
And they began to moan.
Jameson hurriedly lifted his rifle, and snapped off three, four, five shots, taking down the dead as they rose, as quickly as he could, while to his right other Marines also aimed and fired rapidly. But even through the gaping hole, they didn’t have angles on all the ones down there. And the loud bastards were continuing to make that horrific wheezing noise, which could very quickly be lethal for the entire team.
Eli spun around, running to the next flight of stairs. He took them two at a time, running down into the darkness below, his feet thudding on the metal. Jameson rose and followed, leaving the hole to the men behind him. As he turned the corner of the stairwell, his rifle still held high, he saw Eli crouching at the bottom, unleashing a stream of fire into the lab.
“Cease fire, hold position,” Jameson snapped into the radio as the last moaning figure in the room finally fell, hitting the floor with a splash, and all movement and sound in the big white room ceased completely. He scanned the floor and the doors of the dozen or so offices lining the corridor that led from the lab.
And then he listened to the silence for a full ten seconds, until the thud of something soft banging against a window, many floors below, made his heart sink.
“Boss, this is overwatch,” came the voice of one of the rooftop Marines.
Jameson shook his head. Five minutes and we’re already on our way into deep shit.
“Jameson, go ahead,” he said, and waited for the bad news.
“We have significant activity on the street below. I think we woke a lot of them up with whatever that racket was.”
“We had a floor collapse out from underneath us. How many?”
“Not too bad – yet. A few dozen near the building heading towards us, and one ugly motherfucker hammering at the window. A few more moving further away. Most of the street is still. No runners yet, but they’re making a lot of noise now and I don’t think we have much time before the whole neighborhood wakes up.”
“Fuck,” hissed Eli.
Jameson sighed.
“Do you want us to start taking them down?”
Jameson pondered the question. It was a choice between bad and worse. Either they took out the moving ones and risked waking up the whole damn street, and after that the city, or they hoped the ones down below would soon calm. Whether it was the men on the roof, or the ones in the building, someone was going to have to deal with them soon.
“No,” said Jameson. “That will only agitate the rest. Just stay vigilant and update us if it gets worse. We’ll head down and try to keep them out of the building. Over.”
“Roger that. Good luck.”
All in Pieces
Dusseldorf - Target Building
“Okay – stack up and move out,” Jameson said as he began moving toward the next flight of stairs. “First squad, check all the rooms above and make sure that lab is clear. Second squad, down here now. On me.”
He took the stairs two at a time and only slowed as he reached the next landing, signaling the first two Marines behind him to flow through and clear the floor.
“Eli, is any of that crap up there our objective?”
Standing in the middle of the room below the giant hole, and surveying the devastation caused by the collapse, Eli shook his head, even though Jameson was a floor below him.
“I don’t see it,” he said across the squad net.
“Okay, keep looking,” he said, his voice strained with effort. Even though they had stripped their regular infantry gear down to a minimum to allow for faster movement, the amount of kit they carried still made running down stairs a feat in itself.
Jameson hit the next flight, and didn’t bother taking them quietly. Somewhere far below, he could hear the sounds of rasping, and moaning, and more hammering on glass, as the newly awakened population of Dusseldorf began to stir.
“What’s the plan, boss?” came Eli’s voice over the radio.
Jameson continued to take the stairs at speed, hitting the next landing and opening fire on three figures that stumbled out of the door just feet away.
“Break off in pairs, check all the floors as we go – fast. I’m heading down as far as I can to try and hold them off. Elson, Rottes, Johnson, on me. Eli, you’re in charge of the sweep now.”
“Roger that,” replied Eli.
“Anyone finds anything like our objective, shout. Eli will check it out and get the damn thing moving.”
He took the next flight down, leaving the search of the floor above for his men, and then the next, reaching the third floor just as movement came into view on the stairwell below. But he didn’t stop, still taking the stairs two at a time, the tide of Marines behind him breaking off as they passed each floor, the size of the group following him shrinking with each floor. He turned the last corner of the stairwell, which he hoped would lead to the ground floor, and found himself facing three more dead, already slowly stumbling up toward him.
Without hesitation, he cut them down with spaced, single shots, then took the last few stairs, slowing only as he reached the open double-doors that led onto the ground-floor reception area. Behind him, he heard Elson and the others put security double-taps into the dead he had dropped, and a moment later the Marines were at his shoulder, all of them with NVGs now flipped up, and peering out of the dark stairwell into the somewhat brighter but still dim foyer.
Jameson switched his radio to the air-mission net and keyed his transmit button. “Raven Three, One Troop Actual. Send SITREP and advise extraction response time, over.”
The pilot’s voice came back immediately.
“One Troop, Raven Three, we are holding hover at our stand-off point, and can reach you in five minutes. Over.”
Five minutes was a long time, Jameson thought, and he tried to weigh up how long it would take him and the others to get back to the roof.
“That’s received. Stand by,” he said.
“Roger, we’ll be here, Raven Three out,” came the reply.
The large reception area was surrounded on three sides by plate-glass windows that reached almost to the ceiling, and as Jameson peered out from the stairwell, he saw dozens of faces staring into the building from outside. One of the huge window panels had collapsed, its glass scattering across the floor and littering ground that was already cluttered with the remains of the long dead. The elevator, now inoperable, stood open opposite them.
There was no movement inside the lobby – these corpses inside lay inert, either killed before infection, destroyed at the brainstem, or else just not intact enough to have turned in the first place. It was a scene of utter carnage, and Jameson was glad it was one that had concluded over two years ago.
The main problem, he saw immediately, was that although one of the plate-glass windows on the left was half smashed, leaving maybe three feet of jagged glass to block the way, the main doors, thirty feet away across open space, stood wide ope
n. The smashed window backed onto a display cabinet that showed the smiling faces of people in white coats holding up a certificate, and the display, he hoped, would block access through that avenue for a while.
And right now he didn’t have to worry about that entrance because the dead weren’t on that side of the building. But the wide-open front doors still needed to be shut. As he watched, a few other shamblers joined the ones leaning against the intact windows on the right side of the building. They were forty feet from the entrance, and Jameson was relieved the dead didn’t have the cognitive power to realize that an open door or broken window was a much quicker entrance than an intact one.
Above, perhaps three floors at a guess, the snaps of nearly inaudible gunfire sounded. The suppressors were good, but they didn’t completely muffle the sound of the assault rifles. One of the teams now scouring the levels above must have found another pocket of resistance, and Jameson exhaled with relief when the firing ceased and silence returned. He watched the ones still outside, hoping the additional noise wouldn’t rouse even more of them.
Elson was watching him from a few feet away, waiting for orders. Jameson nodded toward the doors.
“We wait,” he said, then raised his rifle and started scanning targets, ready for when the time came.
* * *
Several floors above, Eli crept along another corridor, rifle at the high-ready position, and edged into the last room at the end. The big white room on this floor, into which had crashed the huge one above it, was the first they’d found that even looked anything like a lab. But it had proved to be empty of anything resembling their objective. They’d covered half the building by this time, and apart from some sporadic gunfire, Eli wasn’t getting anything from the rest of the men.
He thought, for one terrible moment, that CentCom’s boffins had made a terrible mistake, and the machine wouldn’t be here at all. But as he was about to make his way toward a closet at the back of what now looked to be some kind of storeroom, his radio buzzed with a voice he didn’t hear very often.
“Eli, this is Sanders. I’m on the fifth floor.” The voice of the quietest Marine in One Troop seemed to betray some excitement.
“Go ahead,” Eli said, panning his weapon smoothly.
“We’ve found what’s definitely a lab down here, and there’s something that might be our target, but I’m not sure.”
Eli backed out of the room, closed the door, and started jogging back toward the stairwell.
“On my way. But why are you not sure?” He hit the stairwell again, passing the two men of First squad guarding it. They stepped aside as he rushed through, and watched him vanish into the darkness below.
“It’s kind of in bits. Like they were taking it apart.”
“Is it fucked?” snapped Eli, almost stopping dead on the stairs, a sickening feeling rushing up to his stomach. “Is it broken?” That, he knew, would spell disaster. They had been told only that the machine was absolutely critical in the search for a cure – and that this was the one place where such a device was known to exist. If they failed here, they would be reduced to scouring every other lab in Europe, or at least the ones that hadn’t already been raided. That could mean dozens or hundreds of new and insanely dangerous missions.
“Negative,” replied Sanders. “Don’t think so. None of it looks broken, just… dismantled.”
Eli took off again, hitting the corridor below just as three of the others were backing out of it. One of them pointed down the opposite direction, toward an open door in a wall of misted glass.
Now that’s what a lab looks like, thought Eli as he hurried through.
Inside, Sanders and another Marine were standing over what Eli could only describe as a pile of junk. As he looked it over, he thought that if it wasn’t for the large white case sitting in the middle of the floor, he would have walked straight back out again. Sanders hadn’t exaggerated when he said dismantled. Why? he wondered. Had the people who worked here realized its importance and tried to package it up and move it?
“Here,” said Sanders, pointing at the side of the big white plastic case. The bubble wrap had already been pulled back, revealing a label. Sanders aimed his weapon-mounted light toward the dirty, scratched logo on the side. “Biacore 4000,” he said, looking hopefully up at Eli. “That’s the thing, innit?”
“That’s the thing,” said Eli, as he looked around again at the mess at their feet. Tubing, bottles, clips, circuit boards, and a set of large drum-shaped cylinders were strewn across the floor. Now we just have to make sure we take all of it with us.
Sanders looked up at him, concerned. “What do we do with all this? There’s all sorts of bits.”
“Just put it in the box. All of it, even if you’re not sure it’s part of the damn thing. Then stuff it full of bubble wrap, tape it all up tight, and we’ll just hope we got it all.”
He turned away as the two Marines let their rifles swing to their sides and began shoving the mess on the floor into the huge padded box. Eli took a look around, trying to spot the trolley that had been mentioned, but there was nothing nearby that looked useful.
“Jameson, Eli.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve got it. I think. It’s the Biacore. But it’s all in pieces.”
* * *
On the ground floor, Jameson sighed with relief.
“Thank fuck,” he said, still watching the lone zombie that was now only a few feet from the open entrance at the front of the building. He peered at those wide-open doors again. The urge to just walk over and shut them was almost uncontrollable, but he knew if he did, the half of Dusseldorf out there on the lawn would see him. The noise they made was already drawing many more from the surrounding streets.
“Can it be moved?” he said.
“Affirmative,” said Eli. “There’s no trolley, which is fucking typical. So we’re gonna have to haul the damn thing up the stairs. It’ll take four to do it.”
“Just get it done, and don’t fucking drop that thing, Eli,” said Jameson. “Everybody else, get out of those rooms and strongpoint all access to that stairwell. Rotate carriage on the haul if need be.”
“On it,” said Eli.
Jameson turned back to the front doors, and tried to judge everything at once.
“Raven Three, this is One Troop,” he called into the radio. “We need extraction ASAP. We have our mission objective and are moving to the roof. Repeat, request immediate extract.”
“Roger that, One Troop. Raven Three copies all, we are inbound.”
Jameson nodded at the other three Marines crouched with him at the entrance to the foyer.
“We give them two minutes head start, then we’re leaving.”
They’re Coming
Dusseldorf - Lobby of Target Building
Jameson watched the front doors, counting the seconds and waiting for their moment to move. Those doors still stood wide open to the outside, and to the locals, and that pain-in-the-ass lone zombie slowly shuffling toward the opening was now barely ten feet away. He had considered just popping it in the head and rushing over to push the doors shut. But he suspected that if he did, all the others would see him, and belatedly work out that they were attacking the stupid side of the building. There were already many more stumbling in from the wider area, and the Marines would soon have more to deal with than the couple of dozen hammering at the windows on the intact side.
Fortunately, for the moment, that crowd wasn’t going anywhere. The glass was thick and the dead still hadn’t figured out they could just walk around the side and in the open door. But that single zombie working its way around would eventually either notice Jameson and the others, or else reach the entrance, in which case they’d have to take it out. Either outcome could spell disaster. But now he looked up to where Elson was indicating and saw a box on the ceiling above the doors.
“It’s a control box,” said Elson in a whisper. “That means there’s a button for it somewhere. Maybe behind the re
ception desk.”
“But no electricity.” Jameson keyed his radio. “Eli.”
“Go ahead.” Eli’s voice was strained, breathless.
“SITREP.”
“Just hitting the stairs. This thing’s heavier than it looks, and there was a lot of crap scattered around we just threw in with it.”
“Can you make it to the roof in five minutes? Helos are inbound.”
“Affirmative, no probs.”
“Good.”
But then another voice cut into the channel.
“Err… overwatch here. I think we have a serious problem.”
“Report,” said Jameson.
“About half a klick north, there’s a lot of movement. We see numerous fast ones heading this direction. Can’t say for sure if they’re inbound our position, but I’d say it’s a good bet.”
“Shit,” cursed Jameson. “How long have we got?” he asked, taking a deep breath.
“Honestly? Three or four minutes tops, maybe less. They’re running like someone shoved a jackhammer up their arses.”
“Fuck,” muttered Eli, his voice labored as he and the other three Marines carrying the box made their way to the seventh floor. “They must have heard the collapse. We should be on the roof in three minutes.”
Jameson shook his head. And to think we were worried about the noise from the helos. But all he said was, “Okay, good.”
But it wasn’t good, not good at all. In a few minutes they were going to have some pretty deadly company, all of it right on their doorstep. He had to act now, even if it meant alerting the dead outside. Those front doors couldn’t be left open.
“Overwatch, maintain position and ping me when they hit the grounds outside.”
“Roger that.”
Jameson turned to the other three with him. He had no choice. If he shut the doors, he might draw everything just outside. But if he left them open, the approaching mob of runners would just dance on in. The doors were directly in their path and they’d be swarming inside the building before the helos were anywhere near. It was a no-brainer.
Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon Page 22
