Apex Fallen

by C. A. Michaels

  “Nope,” Dan said as he turned and walked back to the Lakota. “I wouldn’t want to be going down there anytime soon.”

  He helped the others pull their packs of the helicopter while Lance walked around the edge of the roof, frequently pausing to scan the streets beneath them with his rifle optics. He spent a long time looking to the south before he joined the group.

  Hannah and Scott had pulled out and slung their MP7 submachine guns and had their green Camelbak packs at their feet. The larger Eberlestock packs were lying in front of Julia. Dan claimed his, hauling it in front him, just as Lance returned to the group. He knelt facing outwards, away from the others but spoke clearly so they all could hear. His mannerisms had changed dramatically since this morning, Dan realized, and he was completely focused on the situation around him.

  “As you’ve heard, it’s pretty hostile on those streets out there. There are only hacks as far as I can tell, and a hell of a lot of bodies are scattered around the streets and the car-park. We could take a lot of them down from up here with impunity, and we’ll want to do so before the rest of your squadron arrive tomorrow, but for now I’d prefer to leave them be and focus on getting Julia onto the factory floor. There are two ways down – there is a ladder on the outside of the building that has a twelve foot drop at the base of it, and unless you want to hit the ground fighting I think we’d best avoid that. Instead I’m all for trying to get the door to the stair well open behind us, so we can walk down to the factory and avoid these ghouls on the outside. It’s a standard service-access door and is locked from the inside, so we’ll need to find a way of smashing the handle in. The roof to the walk-way is right next to the service entrance door and it’s going to be a pretty simple job of jumping onto the corridor and then hauling yourself onto the factory roof when we want to check out the LZ for the Blackhawks and Chinooks. We can do that after we see what the factory is like. If you guys try and bust that door in I’ll go back to the South – could you grab a SCAR out and join me, Dan?”

  While Scott pulled a fire-extinguisher out of the Lakota and prepared to start smashing the door in, Dan pulled the SCAR-H out of the rifle scabbard in his pack and carried it over to Lance. Lance had moved back to the corner of the roof he had paused at earlier and pointed down the street.

  “Around sixty meters from us, on the sidewalk. See what you can make out through the scope.”

  Dan lay down, unclipping and placing his HK416 next to him before extending the SCAR’s bipod legs and pulling its stock tightly into his shoulder. He kept the lens at the minimum setting of three times magnification so he could scan the scene with as large a field of view as possible.

  The street beneath him looked like an exact repeat of Colorado Springs with abandoned cars, some clustered together in small pile-ups. A few of the crouching hacks could be seen in his sights as they looked up, occasionally scurrying behind a vehicle in an animalistic scramble of urgent, unpredictable energy. Dan didn’t linger on them but he thought they looked more inhuman and more horrific this time round, possible due to the glazed, whitened eyes he could just make out.

  He continued to scan his rifle from left to right up the street, tracing an imaginary z-pattern as he studied the street. There. He stopped scanning, moved the rifle back down slightly and started to increase the magnification of the Leupold scope. Absence of the normal or presence of the abnormal. That was something that had been drilled into him early on in his career, and it proved useful in countering insurgent tactics in Afghanistan. And he had just seen something abnormal. The scope was at its maximum zoom of 18 power magnification and the details before his eyes were bright, clear, vivid and crisp. “Shit,” he whispered to himself, but his voice was easily loud enough so that Lance could here.

  All along the street were scattered bodies, torn from their vehicles or hunted down as they fled their homes. As Dan had scanned up the street he had seen an unusual pattern on the far sidewalk. There were five bodies lying closely together, four of which were lined up. The fifth lay a few meters away on a grass verge, but Dan could make out a blood trail, indicating that the person had been killed in the same line as the others. It was the unusual grouping of the bodies close together and the unnatural occurrence of a line that got Dan’s attention, but it was the nature of the wounds that had caused him to curse. While they had fallen in various poses, Dan could make out on eat least three of them clean, dark holes on their foreheads. The pooling of blood, skull fragments and brain matter underneath them all indicated they had shared the same fate.

  “Single shots to the head, all of them,” Dan told Lance. “It looks like an execution took place down there.”

  Dan and Lance traded places, with the Ranger using the magnification of the Leupold to get a better look at the scene than he was able to achieve with the HK416’s ACOG.

  “Fuck, you’re right.”

  The discovery seemed to weigh on Lance’s mind and they both moved back to the others. Scott was swinging a fire-extinguisher against the locked door-handle, and as they neared the clanging gave way to a low cracking noise and the handle came loose. Dan slipped the SCAR back into his pack as Scott alternated his grip and swung the fire extinguisher like a battering ram, targeting the weakened lock from where the door-handle had been smashed off. With each blow the door shuddered inwards little by little as the lock gave way until, on his third swing, the look splintered away from the frame and it swung free.

  “And we’re in,” he reported, breathing heavily.

  Hannah and Julia were covering the door with their respective weapons. Nothing came out at them and Scott, having dropped the improvised ram and returned his hands to his MP7, leaned into the stair-well and then turned to them.

  “It’s clear. There is a door on the next level that is shut, too. I can see down, it’s pretty light, and there is nothing between us and the lower door.”

  “OK,” Lance said, “just one thing before we go down. I don’t know what to make of it but there are some bodies out on the street that look like they were shot, recently. Just keep your guard up from here on in, and anyone we see on the outside, well, let’s just be goddamned suspicious about them.”

  Hannah and Scott were looking at Lance, startled by the news. Dan couldn’t see Julia’s expression.

  “Right, Dan, we’ll take the lead. Once we’re on the next level we’ll take our packs and dump them there.”

  Dan shouldered his tall Eberlestock pack and struggled to find his balance for a second. It was heavy, at least bordering on 50 pounds. He was glad they weren’t fighting their way down the stair-well as he held his 416 close to his chest as they started their way down. The light from the smashed door above them helped them see for the first flight until they were half-way and the next flight of stairs was illuminated by light coming through the glass of the doors leading out onto the second floor landing. When Lance reached the last step he knelt down slightly and, unclipping one of the quick release pack straps, let his pack roll quietly onto the ground. He kept his rifle in his shoulder at the low ready and scanned the immediate space outside the door. As Dan lowered his pack next to Lance’s he heard him say, calmly, “They’re waiting.”

  Behind them the three others stacked up on the stairway, waiting. Dan moved alongside Lance so he could see out through the wire-netted safety-glass of the service door. They were looking into a small room with doors leading into the rest of the office block and an open stair-way to their left, leading to the ground floor. Elevator doors were opposite them. Lance tried the handle and said, quietly, “OK, the door is open. Here is what I want to happen. I’m going to stay left, Dan peel round and keep the wall on your right. We will move and cover the doors leading onto this floor to the right. Scott, can you and Hannah move out of this door and then cover the stairs itself. Stay on this level but don’t let anything flank us. Julia, stay central and keep this door from closing. Ready?” he said, addressing his last remark to Dan. Dan’s palms felt sweaty and his head seemed to
be swimming, light and distant from the rest of his body. He shifted his grip on his 416 and slipped the safety catch onto semi before nodding.

  Lance pressed down on the door handle with his non-master hand, keeping his weapon aimed at head-height and smoothly swung the door open outwards, following it out and moving out into the room. Dan tried to stay right behind him, dropping the muzzle of his weapon so it didn’t point at Lance’s back but then bringing it straight back up into the aim. To his left he could hear the muted crack of Lance’s HK cycling through 5.56mm and, from a few meters away, it sounded like Dan was on a golf range, listening to others repeatedly drive a golf-ball with clean, sharp clacks. He had the wall on his right and he could see into the atrium-type area.

  There was a pot-plant to his front and, between his position and Lance, there was a set of double-swing doors leading into a large, open plan office level. Movement caught Dan’s eye to his right and a crouching hack launched at him from behind the indoor plant. On top of Dan’s magnified ACOG was a miniature holographic red dot site for reaction shooting. He didn’t need to adopt a proper check-weld on the 416’s stock to see through the secondary reaction sight and already had the red dot hovering around the creature’s chest as it moved. He tapped the trigger twice, feeling the slight recoil from the carbine as it kicked back at him and, still looking at the target through the red dot, he saw his target collapse, gurgling blood out of its chest cavity Dan’s bullets had imploded. He’d been taking short, shuffling steps forward the whole time and paused to line up his rifle sights on the creature’s head. He kept both his eyes open so he could see around him as he took the shot, then he re-orientated onto the door. Lance was already covering it from the far side of the wall, 5-or-so meters across from Dan. Behind them, out of his sight, he heard a short, low pitched cracking sound before he realized it was one of the suppressed MP7’s firing a short burst. Despite the fact that their weapons were suppressed his ears still rung slightly from having fired the three shots. He covered the final few meters to the open door, arriving a second behind Lance as they both raised their rifles into the office.

  To their front he could see a trashed, disordered office with internal dividers pulled down onto tables and chairs flipped upside. As far as they could see, bodies littered the office. Stalin must have struck when everyone was at their desks. The initial seconds in which Dan thought he was looking at a silent, still scene of a disaster gave way to another slight kick of adrenaline as he registered multiple shapes darting and moving. Alternating between his red-dot site and his magnified ACOG he cycled through them, engaging each time he saw a blur of motion. His shots bored through the office furniture, echoing the sharp crack of the bullet leaving the barrel with a loud and solid splintering thud as they pummeled through the office, throwing small fragments of furniture and paper into the air. He couldn’t see how many targets he was hitting as most of his rounds were being fired at the darting forms after they sprinted behind the office furniture. Still, his 5.56mm rounds were capable of penetrating light cover and the resulting screams coming from the room let him know that, between him and Lance, their sustained fusillade was having an effect. As quickly as the movement started he realized that the hacks were gone. After initially trying to charge us they’d started to run he realized, as he played back the scene in his mind. Initially they came at the sounds and the disturbance we were making, but then they fled, after seeing the effects of our firepower. They act and they seem to think like predators, willing to take risks to get their prey but not wanting to throw their lives away.

  Lance reached out, his rifle still held horizontal, and groped for his side of the door. There was a latch that had to be lifted and, once his hand found it, he let the door swing shut. Dan had to let his rifle hang in his sling as he needed his master hand to unlock the right hand door’s latch. Lance covered him, and then he closed the right-hand door.

  “Something to lock it,” Dan muttered, looking around him. Lance stepped back, searching the area around them for something they could use. Dan dragged a small table that had been next to the elevators over to the doors and tipped it. The edge of the table jammed on the top of the handles and, while it wasn’t secure, it would at least resist some shoving against it before it gave way. Lance nodded, and they backed away.

  Scott and Hannah covered the next flight of stairs.

  “Five or six of ‘em showed and we dropped one,” Scott said, sounding excited. “I’ve blocked the door with a book I found,” Julia called. “It will stay open for us, and I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to turn the handle so it won’t relock, anyway.”

  Both Lance and Dan nodded as they took up their positions to lead the way down the next stair-way. Lance paused as he hit the half-way landing, allowing Dan to move around him and be covered as he walked down onto the lower floor.

  “Front!” Dan called, indicating that he had seen a target as he started firing aimed shots through his mini-red dot sight. The first two targets he had seen in front of him disappeared in small explosions of blood and tissue. He then felt like something was rushing at him from his right, where he hadn’t properly looked, but then Lance was pushing him slightly and the Ranger’s 416 fired a matter of inches away from his chest, taking down whatever had been close. Too close. His chest throbbed from the shockwave of the bullets being fired so near to him.

  The stairs had finished and they were standing in a corner of a large foyer leading in a number of directions. Two elevator doors were shut, with a body lying in a long smear of blood, like an injured person had crawled a few meters over the tiled surface. A main desk in the entrance was the scene of a substantial mess with flowers, papers and a number of pots smashed around it. Dan didn’t look at the bodies that were scattered around the room, most with a long bloodied trail smeared along the floor or walls, but instead focused on identifying the hacks. He thought he could see one lurking behind the foyer table but then the area erupted as Lance engaged it, with the already upturned office chair spinning as another pool of blood leaked from the dead, hidden hack. Dan scanned to the left and fired three bursts at each surge of movement he saw.

  The first two bursts were aimed at fleeing hacks were had been startled by Dan’s rounds but his third burst was aimed at a group of the hunched beasts. Three of the figures had been straddling a body near the main glass doors, staring almost transfixed and startled at the soldiers bursting in and by the initial gunfire. Dan emptied a burst in their direction, scattering the staring hacks and sending one tumbling and screaming onto its side. Lance’s fire found the right-most one with single shots, exploding its chest and face, while Dan put a burst into the left-hand figure as it tried to flee into a corner of the room. Dan’s burst caught it centrally in the chest and it went down, gurgling. The remainder of Dan’s rounds smashed apart a large glass pane leading to the outside. A cascade of glass stormed down, leaving a jagged window leading to the car-park. That didn’t change their situation as Lance called out, fast and panting, “The main door. It’s open!”

  “It’s OK,” Dan called back, “they aren’t rushing and I can hold them in there.” It was true – the hacks weren’t charging them once they realized the speed at which the other beasts were dying. There were a substantial crowd of the low, snarling creatures closing in from the car-park but they kept their distance. Dan bowled a couple over with a few well aimed shots at distance, keeping them at bay. The door-way remained empty.

  “Let’s go!” Lance yelled behind him. The corridor they needed to access to get into the factory was to their immediate left. He waved the three others towards the right door. Julia got to the door first and scrabbled for the handle. She pushed it open, and both Scott and Hannah covered the walkway with their submachine guns. There was some brief firing, suppressed but echoing through the interior space, before a pause and another few bursts reverberated around Dan. Julia came back for Dan, pulling him gently by his shoulder. The area to his front had been quiet but he cycled through a few roun
ds at the hacks lurking outside and then moved with Julia at a slow run into the corridor. Scott shut the door behind them and slid a shelf against it. Outside the windows Dan could see the inhuman predators scramble around the building, keeping their distance but staring incessantly at the movement they had seen.

  “They respond to our firing,” Dan said, feeling a little more in-control of himself after his revelation. “Once you drop one of them the rest seem to back off.”

  Julia seemed to take charge. Her speech was calm and curt, and it seemed as if she was immune to the chaos around them.

  “We need to enter into another set of office rooms from this corridor, and then it’s a large factory floor with two levels to it. I can’t remember where the stairs are, exactly, and I’ve never been up top. If I can spend some time looking through their floor inventory I should be able to find a lot of chargeable batteries and inverter parts that can be put to use in Fort Carson. “

  “OK,” Lance said, “let’s all aim to clear a way up to the second floor of the factory, clear that and then we can use the high ground to sweep the lower level by fire before we physically have to walk through it.”

  Dan checked his magazine and replaced it with a fresh one from his vest. The others did likewise. Remembering what the patrol leader had told him back in Fort Carson, Dan made sure he could reach the two flash-bangs on his battle-belt.

  “If we get swamped or overwhelmed I’ll toss a stun grenade, which I’m told works well against the hacks. Close your eyes and turn your heads from the area before it goes off, if you can, but otherwise just kneel and let the effects of the blast wear off while the others cover you.”

  Lance nodded at him and checked his own flash-bang pouches. They had covered the small corridor and were ready to make entry into the factory.

  “OK, let’s keep it close together. Same order of march – I’ll lead, Dan will cover. Julia, stay behind us and Hannah and Scott cover the left, right and rear. Don’t let us get more than a few meters ahead of you and call out if anyone falls back or if we start getting too far ahead of you.” He made eye contact with Dan, who managed a half-smile, half-grimace to let him now he was ready.