This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  FIFTEEN.

  Captain Harry Lee had learned a lot during his tour of Boston. His Humvee had the bullet holes to prove it. The windshield had been cracked by an axe. The doors bore the scars of a run-in with a chainsaw.

  He sat on the passenger side in front of a stack of radios, consulting a map that revealed the strategic situation at a glance. He used one of the radios to talk to base and the other to communicate with the escort vehicles. The map had an overlay of clear film, on which he’d drawn all known blue forces in the area with a wax pencil. Next to him, Staff Sergeant Michael Murphy, a large wad of dip tucked into his cheek, spit into a cup and kept his eyes on the road.

  With his handsome face and square jaw, Captain Lee looked like a World War Two movie hero. One expected to see him charging a machine gun nest on a Pacific island in some grainy black-and-white film. The overall impression people got from him was fierce, though he rarely lost his cool. It was his eyes; when he became angry, his gray eyes bored right through you.

  Two Humvees rolled in their wake, carrying a squad of handpicked shooters from HQ Company. These same guys had escorted Lee to endless parleys with village elders in Afghanistan and on more than a few field trips deep into the bush. At first, they’d bitched that he was always dragging them into the shit, but now they followed him around like a pack of loyal bloodhounds. They looked up to Lee as a father figure and imitated his cool. They would kill for him, and they would die for him. With that kind of devotion came a special kind of responsibility because for Lee, the mission always came first, and he would do anything to achieve it.

  Lee was the battalion S-2, or intelligence officer. Intelligence assessment was critical to mission planning, but the situation was fluid, and he didn’t like what he’d been getting from the field. He’d toured the city in a helicopter and had seen hell below. Then he took three Humvees out into the field to see what was happening on the ground.

  He’d seen, all right. He’d seen things he’d never forget. And he’d come to a disturbing realization, one that confirmed his suspicions—and worst fears—about what was happening.

  Military and civilian authorities had lost control of Boston.

  “A lot of cars ahead,” Foster called down from the Humvee’s cupola.

  Lee saw them. The cars weren’t moving, which meant the Humvee would have to slow down and possibly stop. “Stay frosty.” He radioed the same message to his escorts.

  “It’s a traffic jam,” Foster added. “No way through.”

  Murphy already had a map spread across the steering wheel. “If we turn at this next intersection, it’ll take us right back to Massachusetts Avenue.”

  That was a November Golf—a no go. The civilian population had lost faith in the military after the power failed and, in open defiance of the ongoing curfew, had tried to flee the city in anything that moved. A huge number of refugees had been caught out in the open; the infected must have thought it was Christmas. Most of the arteries leading out of the city had been turned into parking lots strewn with abandoned luggage and the unlucky dead.

  “There’s always Garden Street,” Murphy added.

  They were trying to reach the Harvard University campus. Several buildings there had been commandeered by Bravo Company as an operating base. Harvard was the last stop on Lee’s tour. Once he reached it and refueled, he’d be able to work his way onto Fresh Pond Parkway and take it to Concord Turnpike, routes that had been blocked off for military and emergency vehicle use. Those roads would get him and his boys most of the way back to Hanscom Airbase.

  “Cut through the park,” Lee ordered. “Stick to the pedestrian paths.”

  Murphy smirked. “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s funny, I still keep thinking this is America, and you can’t just drive a Humvee through a park without special permission.”

  “Times have changed, Mike.”

  Murphy turned the wheel. “Roger that.”

  What started as a daytrip had turned into three, each marked by traffic jams and random attacks, with the attacks growing more frequent by the hour. The infection rate had become geometric; it wasn’t going to be long before the crazies outnumbered the rest of the population here. They already far outnumbered the military forces in the area. The only reason Boston hadn’t already become a complete madhouse was that, while the crazies enjoyed infecting their victims, they liked killing them even more.

  The only answer was withdrawal. Give up Boston. Game over.

  That, or extermination. Get some armor. Announce a curfew. Put Bradleys and Humvees on every street, Apaches in the air, and have them shoot everything in sight. Totally clean house.

  The Colonel, of course, wouldn’t hear of it. It was against doctrine. The U.S. Army had given up the initiative early in the game. The infected had become the most dedicated, deadly enemy the Army had ever faced. But doctrine still regarded the crazies as sick civilians.

  The civilian leadership and the Big Green Machine would realize what had to be done at some point, but by then, it would be too late, if it weren’t already. So instead of concentrating overwhelming force and doing what needed doing, the battalion remained dispersed in small formations, trying to maintain law and order while getting chewed up for it.

  Imagine you deploy an army on a series of hills. From there, you command the region. Then a flood comes. The hills become islands, and your army commands nothing but the ground it’s standing on. And the waters keep rising…

  The Humvees drove past trees from which a grisly collection of bodies hung by their necks. Men, women, children. In the distance, a group of laughing women roasted a flayed corpse on a spit over an open fire. One wore a helmet that once belonged to an infantryman.

  They waved and flashed their breasts as the Humvees passed.

  “Can I light them up?” Foster yelled, yanking the charging handle on his heavy machine gun.

  “Don’t waste the ammo.”

  “It’s time for some payback, Captain.”

  Lee shook his head. With the Taliban, payback had meant something. Killing the infected for payback was like punching a shelf after you accidentally slammed your head against it. The shelf wouldn’t care, and you’d probably just hurt yourself.

  Murphy growled, “Give it a rest, Foster. You’ll see more action soon enough. We need you to stay alert up there.”

  “Wilco, Staff Sergeant.”

  The little convoy drove the rest of the way through the park without incident.

  “I got some family here,” Murphy said after a while. “Distant relatives.”

  “I didn’t know,” Lee said.

  The big staff sergeant shrugged.

  “Are they okay? Have you heard anything?”

  “No.”

  “If they’re on our route, we could stop and check on them.” It was an offer Lee would not have made to anyone else.

  “Right now, sir, I’m focused on getting back to Hanscom alive.” Murphy spit into his cup. “We weren’t close or anything, but I’d visit them from time to time. I liked coming here. You know, it used to be a really nice town.”

  Lee knew he should say something earnest about it becoming a great city again once they completed their mission. The streets would be packed with people and traffic, and the Red Sox would play again at Fenway Park. But he couldn’t. He said nothing.

  At that moment, he realized he’d lost faith in their ability to win this war.

  Murphy sighed and nodded as if he’d read the captain’s mind. “Yeah.”

  “We’re still here,” Lee said. “We won’t lose it all.”

  It was more a vow than a prediction.

  SIXTEEN.

  Scott Wade knew he was going to die in this hospital.

  He’d survived horrific battles against the Taliban over the past year. Only once had he truly been convinced he was going to be killed. After it became clear the Americans were pulling out to fight a new war, the Taliban, still fighting the old war, staged an all-out assault on Combat Outpost K
atie. They wanted American bodies and weapons as trophies to show off. They could then claim they’d driven out the infidels.

  In a night attack, the Taliban took out the gun placements in the tower with rocket-propelled grenades. Soviet-era heavy machine guns rattled along the ridges. The red sparks of tracer rounds blurred across the rocks. A stray rocket blew up the fuel truck and drenched the compound in fire. The ammo in a burning Humvee began to cook and pop at intervals.

  The first two waves of fighters blew themselves up on the claymores. The rest raced to the walls. They threw grenades and emptied their AK-47s.

  The platoon threw everything they had at them. The air filled with hot metal flying in all directions. After Guzman toppled with a smoking hole in his helmet, Wade took over his M240 machine gun and returned fire until the barrel got so hot it began to melt.

  Apache gunships approached but didn’t engage, the soldiers afraid of killing American troops. Outpost Katie replied if the helicopters didn’t start dropping ordnance, they were going to be overrun. The Apaches opened up with their chain guns. After this pounding, the guerillas melted away into the mountains while the gunships pursued like angry wasps and mopped up the stragglers.

  Wade had been wounded in three places on his left arm. Bravo Company’s medic performed some quick field surgery and told him he didn’t rate a medevac. The next day, the company struck its colors and drove down to Kabul, which was in chaos due to the plague, then flew out of the Sandbox to Vicenza, Italy. Then to Fort Drum in New York State. Then to Boston.

  To Christ Hospital, where, ironically, he was going to die.

  As far as he knew, most of his platoon had already been wiped out. He didn’t have a weapon. Pain lanced through his ankle. His left leg could barely take his weight. His right trembled with exhaustion. He was on the fifth floor of a large building filled with thousands of homicidal maniacs. And one of the best soldiers he’d ever known wanted to stab him to death.

  Ramos lurched over the corpses. Wade wondered what was holding the man together. Half his face was gone. He moved jerkily, like a puppet.

  Wade limped down the corridor and pushed the stairwell door open. He looked down and heard echoing sounds of struggle. Stomping feet. Shouts. Laughter. From outside, he could hear the hammering of the fifty-cal machine guns mounted on the Humvees.

  Nowhere to go but up.

  He grit his teeth and pulled his body up the stairs one step at a time.

  Behind him, the door slammed open.

  “An Army of one, motherfucker!”

  Wade kept climbing. He finally came to a roof exit and prayed it was unlocked.

  The door opened with a squeak of the hinges. He cried with relief and stepped outside.

  Bright sunshine washed over him. The light flickered as a squadron of Apache gunships roared past, bristling with their low-slung chain guns. They weren’t part of his mission. He had no way to contact them.

  Wade paused to catch his breath. The view struck him. Parts of Boston were on fire. He smelled smoke. The ever-present sirens had fallen silent, replaced by a distant chorus of screams and laughter. The epidemic had reached some tipping point. After weeks of endless struggle, the military had finally lost control.

  Behind him, the door banged open. Ramos staggered from the dark opening as relentless as the Terminator. He laughed with red teeth. He still held his pig-sticker. “Get some.”

  Wade backed away until he reached the edge of the roof. Far below, he saw the fifty-cals rocking on the Humvees. The gunners stood hunched behind the heavy machine guns, blasting away at the hospital entrance.

  He had nowhere to go. He was going to have to fight. That, or jump to his death.

  Then he spotted a maintenance ladder. He hoped it ran down the length of the building. It was a chance he had to take.

  The pain in his foot nearly blinded him when he tried to move again. Ramos laughed, terrifyingly close. Wade didn’t look behind. Instead, he doubled his pace, crying out in pain. He gripped the ladder rails and began to climb down, favoring his right foot.

  The ladder reached all the way to the ground. At the halfway point, Wade looked up and saw his sergeant’s grimacing face at the top. He resumed his downward climb. The sergeant wasn’t following. Wade knew he was going to make it.

  His body tingled as the shadow fell over him. He heard rags of clothing flapping in the wind. Something was coming at him—fast.

  It was Ramos. Wade hugged the ladder as the sergeant flew past. He cried out as searing pain ripped across his face.

  Ramos kept falling, laughing all the way, until his body smashed against the asphalt.

  Wade pulled off his glove and touched his cheek. His fingers came away red. He was wounded. His entire face hurt like a son of a bitch. Blood poured down his neck. Ramos had jumped and sliced him on the way down, cutting Wade’s cheek wide open.

  Wade remembered seeing him lick the knife. I’ve got the Bug! His mind blanked out with fear. He counted the seconds.

  Nothing happened.

  I’m okay. I’m okay. Please let me be okay.

  He knew the surviving members of the platoon would be frantically trying to contact Lieutenant Harris. The idea that they might give up and bug out, leaving him there, terrified him even more than the possibility of infection.

  He hurried the rest of the way down and limped toward the vehicles, waving his arms. Halfway there, he collapsed with a groan.

  A figure knelt next to him. A panicked face came into focus. Corporal McIsaac.

  “Fuck, it’s Wade.”

  “Goddamn. Look at him.”

  “Help me get him into the Humvee.”

  Wade heard the metallic crack of an M4.

  “Move it! I’ll cover forward!”

  Wade glimpsed a horde of gleeful men and women—naked or dressed in the rags of hospital gowns—pouring out of the entrance of the hospital. They waved and clapped as the fifties tore them apart.

  He grimaced as somebody squirted antiseptic onto—

  —the Bug—

  —his wound and slapped a bandage onto it.

  “What do you see?” Wade croaked. Worms? Little crawling worms?

  McIsaac patted his chest. “It’ll need stitches.”

  Hands lifted him. The sun burned into his eyes as he was half carried, half dragged across the parking lot and shoved into one of the vehicles. He couldn’t stop crying.

  “Let’s move!”

  “Jaworski! Mount up!”

  The Humvee lurched forward. The gunner stood next to Wade, his head and shoulders above the roof so he could work the machine gun. Empty shell casings rained into the vehicle and rattled across the roof. Wade heard the whump of a Mark 19 on another Humvee as it spit grenades into the hospital emergency room. Glass sprayed across the parking lot.

  The hospital entrance was obscured by smoke and dust. The lightfighters cheered.

  “We’re out of here!”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hang in there, Wade. You’re okay now.”

  “What happened?” the driver yelled. “Where’s the rest of your team?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “What? Are we going back?”

  Wade shook his head. He felt dizzy. “They’re all dead.”

  “What are the Tomcats doing here?”

  “Do they see us?”

  Wade glanced out the window in time to see the squadron of Apaches launch batteries of Hellfire missiles from their stub-wing pylons.

  “Holy shit! Go, go, go!”

  Guided by advanced radar systems, the Hellfires rocketed into the hospital with an aerosol roar and burst with a flash.

  The ground trembled under the rig’s wheels. Wade felt the air around him suck toward the blast. Brilliant white light washed out his vision. His ears filled with terrifying booms. The sensation was like getting struck by lightning.

  The gunner dropped into the vehicle. “Just go, just go, just go!”

  They were too close
to the blast. Debris rained around the Humvees.

  “Just—”

  Something big struck the vehicle with a CLANG. The windshield cobwebbed. The vehicle rocked and swerved. Hot oil sprayed from the crumpled hood. The engine howled. The driver fought for control. The gunner screamed.

  Wade was flung into darkness.

  SEVENTEEN.

  Harvard University was comprised of numerous old buildings situated on a two-hundred-acre campus in Cambridge, just three and a half miles northwest of downtown Boston. Before the Bug, the institution of higher learning had been one of the most prestigious in the world. School was currently out of session. Possibly forever.

  Harvard had become home to elements of Bravo Company. They occupied a cluster of buildings in the northwest corner of campus, protected from the street by an iron rail fence. Captain Marsh had established his headquarters at the center, in Holden Chapel.

  The campus was Bravo’s third outpost in as many weeks. The battalion was steadily being pushed out of the downtown core as the area became virtually overrun with crazies.

  It was the last stop on Captain Lee’s tour.

  The Humvees pulled up to the iron pedestrian gate and parked. Lee’s shooters spilled out of the other Humvees and surrounded the vehicles, weapons at the ready.

  Lee tried to see into the windows, but the shades were drawn. “See anything?”

  “Nothing,” Murphy responded. “We’re driving on fumes. I hope they’re still here.”

  “I hope they don’t have the Bug,” Foster called down.

  “If they had the Bug, we’d be dead already,” Murphy said. “Pay attention up there.”

  “Contact!” said Foster. “Target, two hundred meters.”

  Lee got out of the vehicle and aimed down Massachusetts Avenue through his carbine’s close-combat optic. He couldn’t see anything past the obstacle course of smashed cars that blocked the way ahead and had turned the street beyond into a parking lot.