Dan was alternating between a firing position on the edge of the conex and kneeling next to the radio. It was hard to know exactly what was going on, but it was clear that things were getting worse for all the units in Colorado Springs. Contact reports were sparking up from all quarters. Gunfire was echoing in the background from afar. Everyone seemed to be getting skittish about the lack of bombs and bullets on the radio chatter, and from a few hurried transmissions Dan seemed to think that the trucks were no longer being used to move refugees to Fort Carson but were instead picking up what ammo they could and running it out to the deployed forces. He had tried to confirm whether they could get a resupply but his messages kept getting cut-out by elements further to the south who wanted to call in their sighting and engagements. Lance didn’t push Dan to get an answer as they both knew they weren’t going to see any more bullets until daylight at least. Not with all the excitement and activity further south, at any rate. It was possible that the majority of the forces back south didn’t even know the Rangers were out here to the north, so they were almost certainly on their own.
Gunfire was by now a constant echo through the Springs suburbs. Their firing was at a reduced rate but there was a frequent sound of hammering machine gun bursts and staccato rifle fire in the distance as well as amongst them. The civilians moving past them were only leaving one hell-hole and passing into another. Dan reflected on Winston Churchill’s saying – when you find yourself moving through hell, keep going. Good advice, he thought.
Lance was getting worked up about his boys to the north. The limited comms they’d had indicated that they were in immediate contact from the moment they left the sight of their compound, but civilian traffic continued to reach them in drips and drabs of refugees so they must be holding the route open, at least partially. The last few messages Dan relayed to Lance indicated that they’d gone firm as they struggled to hold open the road to civilians as it ran between a massive commercial car-park – possibly a Wal-Mart – on one side of the road and a baseball field on the other. It sounded like the car-park was over-run with the beasts and the Rangers had their hands full in the midst of a stand-up brawl of man versus monster.
The Rangers forward on the fence called out that they were both down to their last mag. It was now 0200 hours. The last two hours had gone past in a blur but dawn was still a long, long way away. While their ammo supply shrunk the movement of refugees continued, and the strain in the voices of the men forward was telling. They knew that soon they wouldn’t be able to affect the street and, instead of protecting their passage south, would only be able to watch as the refugees were massacred.
Lance had no orders to give. They just had to hold and endure. That didn’t work for the men, though.
“I’m out,” one called as he dismounted from his position on the fence and moved to the gate. Lance swore violently.
The other Ranger checked his mag and called out “10 left.” Ten bullets – next to nothing. He swung himself onto the ground, too. Both moved towards the gate, acknowledging Lance with a half-salute, half-wave as they passed. Lance’s face was in his hands and Dan couldn’t tell if he was cursing them or trying to block them out. They swung through the gate and the Ranger who was out of rounds slung his weapon onto his back, reaching for his pistol on his thigh. The gunner with the Mark 48 gun joined them, moving onto the street. The marksman on the roof cursed loudly, over and over again. There was no way out for those men, they all knew. They were down to their pistols, which could hit targets out to 30 meters at most, and then it was hand-to-hand combat at extreme close quarters. The plan had been to hold their compound when they could do no more, but the Rangers were going to hold the street open for as long as they could stand, and for as long as civilians passed by them. The sight of young children moving with a parent or guardian was horrific enough knowing they were being chased and harassed, but watching those same figures move to their doom in front of them would be too much. Lance swore again and then jumped off the roof to join them. The marksman was firing faster, now, as the men moved onto the street. He was still cursing. Fuck, fuck, fuck this shit-hole. Fuck, FUCK! He and Dan were alone on the roof for a minute before he too shouldered the SCAR and slipped off the roof, into the street lights and made his way onto the street.
Dan followed. His stomach was clenched and he felt a chill grip him from the inside out, but he had to stay with these men, he told himself. Surviving wasn’t enough – he had to survive with his honor intact if he, Captain Dan Martin, was going to survive at all.
On the street the bounding, aggressive figures were able to get closer to the refugee column now that there wasn’t any rifle fire to keep them at bay. The Mark 48 was barking short bursts as the gunner rested the gun on the bonnet of an empty vehicle. Both of the riflemen had slung their HK416’s over their shoulder and had both their hands on their pistols. The SCAR was still in action, but it wasn’t as light as a HK416 and the bulk of the heavier battle rifle was working against the marksman as he tried to rapidly engage threats at only twenty meters distance from him. Only Dan and Lance still had their 5.56mm assault rifles firing.
Dan tried to move so he was in-line with the Rangers but every time he tried to cover the ground he needed to his eye was drawn to movement, and he was scanning or engaging. The civilians moving past were doing so at a run. Perhaps they could see and hear the desperation in the Ranger’s actions, or perhaps distance was deceptive and they had always moved passed the compound at this pace. Dan couldn’t tell. Dan almost shot a young boy who ducked behind a car door, but the moment Dan went to pull the trigger he saw a scared, terrified face through his sights – not the bloodied, grimacing visage of the ghouls. Dan raised his rifle and fired, higher, at two dark figures that were moving, hunched, a few yards behind the boy. He sprinted forward and took his left hand off his weapons so he could pull the kid towards him. There were no time for niceties as he shoved the youth in with other figures that were running to the south.
Over his right shoulder he could see one of the Rangers holster his pistol back onto his battle-belt and draw a knife. Holy shit, this was getting beyond desperate. Dan was on his last magazine and trying to make every round count, and he was sure Lance was doing the same. Lance was waving him in. They were forming a small circle, their backs pressed in to each other, their knives and weapons facing out into the chaos swirling around them.
Dan covered the short distance to the rest of the group in a quick dash. The ground was littered with the bodies of the Ranger’s targets which made movement down the street a challenge, but there was enough adrenaline in Dan’s system that he barely noticed. The world around him was a blur, with only his weapon sight and the threats that materialized around him crystallizing in his thoughts as clear, logical targets. Everything else was motion, disorder and confusion which he subconsciously blocked out as his trained mind prioritized only the life-or-death threats. He staggered into the group. The SCAR marksman had his pistol drawn; the other two Rangers and Lance all had knives in their hands and were in a frontal fighting stance. Dan knew he too was down to his last few rounds as they faced outwards into the anarchy.
The first figure seemed to leer at them before ducking back behind a car and scampering around to the side. It re-emerged a few meters away, moving towards a one of the fleeing refugees behind them. Whatever was occurring in their mangled, deformed minds, they clearly possessed a hunter’s instinct to target the weak, isolated members of a herd first. Avoid an enemy’s strength and instead target their weakness – this was a foundation of military doctrine, but it was also an ingrained behavior amongst the most successful predators. These creatures were clearly exhibiting that trait and seemed intent on smashing past the thin line held by the Rangers and reaching for the terrified, isolated civilians behind them.
The soldiers weren’t willing to let that happen. The marksman fired his pistol at the scurrying shape as it moved past, hitting it with his second shot. The 9mm round collected the bent
-over figure in its abdomen and it went down, howling. They ignored the sustained screams of pain from the creature as more were looming at them, trying to get passed to the civilians. The marksman fired another double-tap from his pistol as Dan orientated onto a target to his half-left. His vision focused on the murky shape as his fore-sight, centered in his vision, blurred against the moving figure. The HK416 kicked into his shoulder as he released his first round, but he held his point of aim and fired again. The figure halted in front of him, and he pulled the trigger a third time. Even in the reflections and the dim light he saw half the beast’s head explode outwards, and then the body followed the arc of blood in a slow, ungainly tumble into the asphalt.
When he turned back to the group they had spread out. One Ranger had his knife drawn and was lunging at a figure, seeking to batter at its head with both his fists. The marksman, clearly recognizable with the long, sleek SCAR shouldered vertically against his back, held another figure by its hair and savagely worked his knife into its throat and face. Lance was trying to stay central within the group while a rifleman to his right ran down a ghoul that was surging towards one of the last refugees he could see. The machine gunner was facing up the road, his Mark 48 in his shoulder and the barrel scanning across the faces of the refugees as they moved past him, making sure none of the ghouls were sneaking through. Someone was screaming to the last couple of civilians heading towards them to go, go, go!
Dan saw another figure to his front and he instinctively raised his 416. He steadied his point of aim and when the figure reappeared for a second time he confirmed it had the menacing, hunched shape of the enemy. Dan squeezed the trigger, but all he heard was a metallic click and he felt the minutest shudder within his grasp as his carbine’s firing pin struck thin air. Mother of God. An infantryman’s worst sound – the deadman’s click. He was dry; out of ammo.
Training took over. Instinctively he wanted to run, but before he knew it he was in the face of the ghoul and, through the murky night air, could see its open, sneering mouth and bloodied, clotted face. Somehow in his bound forwards up to the creature he had unclipped the 416 from his shoulder sling and had it raised, butt first, into the sky. He was on autopilot, fuelled by adrenaline and driven by years on training, reflex and muscle memory. His mind was screaming to flee and get away, but every other fiber in his body made him close with the enemy. It felt magnetically right that he was moving into a close quarters engagement, not giving his enemy a yard to play with before he was there, ready for the kill. His butt crashed down into the creature’s face. A howl, and he followed the butt stroke with a second, and then a third blow. The blur of the assault had taken him by surprise and only now did he feel that he was in control of himself again. Beneath him the beast staggered back, falling onto its back and screaming in pain. Blood had sprayed into the air and he could see that one of the creature’s cheeks had collapsed inwards, broken. These bastard things were tearing and smashing at school-kids yesterday, Dan thought, and he felt nothing but fury at them. He stepped towards the creature and stamped at its throat. He had trouble retaining his balance as the heel of his boot connected with the writhing form beneath him, but he managed to stay upright and continued to pummel at its head with his heel. Seconds later the creature stopped screaming and went limp. Instead of a horrific howl Dan heard only an empty hiss underneath him as oxygen escaped from the deformed figure’s lungs through a broken, shattered jaw.
Dan sagged back against the car nearest him, his back pressed against the cold metal. He felt ancient, years older than when he’d left the compound just across from him, and he had trouble connecting the sights, sounds and smells around him as reality. It felt like he was a witness for a bizarre, tragic slide-show that he had no part in.
Ahead of him a Ranger was struggling with three assailants, and then he’d taken a blow to the neck, just underneath his helmet, and he went down. He was seized upon in a frenzy by the hunched figures around him. Dan turned further to the right. Two of the Rangers were already down, but one had taken a knee over his fallen comrade and was desperately thrusting his combat knife at the figures that loomed near them. He was being surrounded, and then was enveloped by darting, fast moving shapes.
In the distance Dan heard a defiant scream, Come and get ‘em!, and then realized that he was hearing the last words of the Ranger fighting on his knee. The machine gunner was on the street with his Mark 48 in front of him. He was trying to insert a small belt of linked ammo into its open feed tray as it rested on the ground. His pistol was re-holstered, emptied, and he must be down to his very last rounds of belt. He didn’t have enough time to finish reloading his gun and he was seized upon by a sprinting shape that grabbed him by his helmet and pulled him head-first into a frenzy of yet more waiting beasts.
In a matter of seconds Dan had surveyed the scene and watched the final moments of a Ranger fire-team amongst the chaos of close quarter combat. Lance, who he hadn’t noticed before, was only five meters away from him to his right, standing up straight and tall in amongst the anarchy. He had his hand pressing his ear-piece in and he was talking into his mike, begging, pleading and demanding the rest of his squad to return, but he was hearing nothing in response.
The last of the civilians had passed by them and were gone, which would explain why they had been attacked. The soft, easy targets weren’t there so the creatures, lacking easy prey, had turned their attention to the soldiers. Dan moved, yelling Lance’s name. Lance turned, incomprehensible. Dan grabbed him and dragged him back against the car. Lance, a strong and stocky man, didn’t resist.
“It’s over!” Dan screamed into his face. “It’s over! We need to get out of here!”
Until then he had been overwhelmed by events and felt like a witness to something terrible he was helpless to stop. Having seen the stoic, proud way that Lance stood in the streetlight, surveying the brave end of his men but not backing down, Dan knew he had to take control. If he didn’t both he and Lance would almost certainly die out there on Nebraska Avenue. Not everything was lost yet, though, and Dan didn’t want to go meekly. He wanted to slaughter and destroy the hunched creatures, and he wanted to avenge the Rangers who had fallen around him. He couldn’t gain anything by throwing his life away now, so instead he was going to save Lance.
“It’s over!” Lance continued to stare at him, his face fixed in an empty, hollow expression. Dan took action and stood up. He seized hold of the grab-handle on the back of Lance’s armor and half-pulled him upwards. Dan saw a street directly opposite and he started running. Both of them stumbled over the bodies of the dead and dying ghouls as they staggered away from the killing zone.
***
Dan let go of Lance’s armor after they had covered two hundred meters. They had left the main street and moved into a side avenue dominated by small, pre-fabricated housing that was somewhere between town-houses and trailer park units. Dan stepped up to the nearest door, threw his shoulder against it and collapsed inside. He had to stand back up and haul Lance in before he could properly rest.
Lance was breathing hard, his body armor plunging up and down as his lungs and chest pumped beneath it. Dan looked at Lance’s face and realized he had tears streaming down his cheeks. This man has lost a lot, he thought. He’s lost everything. He’s done everything, and given everything, and seen it all torn asunder.
“You can’t do anymore,” he said, staring into Lance’s eyes that were fixed on something only he could see, as if he were staring into the distance, not at the wall in front of him. “We were the last ones standing. The civilian foot traffic had ended, the civilians had all passed through – there was nothing left for us to do. We achieved our mission.”
Dan didn’t add that the only reason that if the flow of foot traffic had ended it almost certainly meant that the Rangers to the north had been overrun. As long as they held out the refugee column would have continued; they must have made a last stand, too, when out of ammo. Once they were gone the creatures would have
had a free run at the civilians trying to wind their way south. Anyone left would now be hiding or fighting for their lives. The safe passage along Nevada Avenue was over.
Lance nodded, but Dan wasn’t sure he had registered anything. Dan did the best to scrape the broken door shut and then he collapsed next to Lance, his back against the same wall. The inside of the small building was quiet and empty. Both Dan and Lance stared at the wall opposite them, motionless and quiet, their breathing the only sound in the darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
They didn’t move until dawn. Dan heard some movement outside in the early hours of the morning and clenched his HK416 to him. It was nothing more than an expensive, elaborate and high-tech club, but it was all he had. He was thankful that he didn’t have to use it and they were able to stay in the small room, silent, until the sun started to stream through the small windows.
There was nothing to say. Lance’s breathing was steadied and his body relaxed after a few minutes inside, but Dan knew he would be hurting, badly. He had just lost his entire team. Unlike Dan’s platoon, which had been an ad-hoc collection of strangers assembled at the last minute for a common task, Lance would have known the men alongside him. They would have been his friends and his comrades, and now they were lost, fallen in the crazed world they found themselves part of. As the dawn light started to illuminate their surroundings Dan could see that Lance had only his pistol on him, holstered to his thigh, and a knife on his padded combat belt. He remembered that Lance had been down to his knife while facing the hordes on the street, so that meant they were completely out of ammo.
Despite the fact that the floor was only covered by thin, worn carpet Dan struggled to move from his position. He had become comfortable sheltering against the wall and his body felt heavy and drained from the constant and cumulative effects of adrenaline, shock and close combat. They had to move, though. Once the first beams of sun had cast their light onto the heel of his light-weight Belleville desert boots he rolled, slowly, onto his feet. The door behind him was smashed around the lock, where he had shouldered it inwards, and the curtains in the room weren’t drawn. It was easy for him to see out and it would be easy for anyone, or anything, to see in. Dan spent the next few minutes standing up, motionless, listening to the early morning rustle of trees and tweeting of the birds. Holding his HK416 close to his body he reached out with his non-master hand and quietly pulled at the door.
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