Apex Fallen

by C. A. Michaels

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Lance would be able to hear his quiet curses through his head-set, but Dan didn’t care. Crouched in the bushes, also lying down, was a bloodied and hissing creature, its lips parted in a gruesome sneer. It spat and hissed as its hands grasped at Dan’s trousers, pulling itself on top of him. Dan felt a deep-set sense of revulsion grip him as he saw the bloodied gums and teeth work up and down. His 416 was behind him, out of reach. Fuck! The creature’s grip was strong, but it stayed low and prone. Dan could feel its fingers dig into his waist, just under his belt, as if the ghoul was trying to tear into his flesh with its nails.

  Dan’s right hand was searching for his pistol. His feet kicked and flailed, but under the weight of the hack he couldn’t get any traction to push him further away. Behind him he heard the opening crumps of HE going off. Lance must have initiated the ambush, but Dan was fighting for his life against a different enemy.

  Dan’s finger brushed over the hilt of his pistol and then his fingers desperately groped for the holster’s release mechanism. He slipped the pistol out, and fumbled while trying to get his hand around the grip. The ghoul was snarling and spitting and, for the briefest second, locked eyes with him. Dan couldn’t see anything but animalistic aggression stare back at him as one of the beast’s hands reached out and clawed towards his face. The eyes were human, clear and white with brown irises, but there was no consciousness or recognition behind them. Instead of a smile the lips were pulled back in the permanent sneer of the infected, like a dog with heckles raised. Dan instinctively felt fear; his own and the creatures, too. For some reason it felt pinned, trapped inside the bushes, and it was now fighting to the death, as was he.

  Their brief moment of eye-contact was broken as one of the ghoul’s hands reached for his eyes. Dan grunted and automatically tilted his head down, away from the bloodied grip. The fingers and palm slapped and skimmed over his helmet, missing his head in its downward swipe. Dan’s fingers found the trigger of his pistol and he fired, twice, in a blind panic. The bullets punched out into the bush, completely missing both of them, but the sudden slapping sound caused the ghoul to start backwards in surprise. Dan used the split-second afforded to him to properly grip the pistol, feeling where the barrel was pointing, and loosely aimed it up into the hack. His third shot collected it in the chest, the 9mm blowing out half of the creature’s shoulder blade as it excited in a hail of bone fragments and tissue.

  The creature’s howl was drowned out by the ongoing explosions behind him. Lance was screaming something in his head-set but Dan was focused on trying to get his pistol up and aimed at the beast’s head. The hack was shocked, weakened and in pain, trying to roll off him, and Dan managed to raised himself on his left elbow while his right hand pushed the pistol out into the hack’s distorted face. He fired a final round, ending the creature’s existence while its eyes were still fixed into his. The lifeless body of the stinking, gruesome creature simply rolled away, dead and lifeless. Dan’s eye, for some reason, caught sight of the remnants of a body to his right, further along under the bushes. Had that creature been eating a corpse? The thought left Dan immediately as the sounds of a firefight came crashing back to him. Lance. Beard. The second convoy. The mission. Fuck.

  Dan ignored the mild throbbing in his thigh and in his solar plexus as he rolled back to his HK carbine that was lying at the edge of the vegetation. To his front the trucks had slewed to a halt, with the guns on top pointing and blasting in the direction of Lance’s building. Now he could focus on the environment around him the roar and clash of gunshots hit him like a massive wave, leaving him deafened and a little disorientated. A few men had dismounted from their trucks and all had M4s or M16s pointing at the building. A few machine guns chewed apart the facade in a staccato fashion, throwing cement and plaster into a haze of dust. Further along Dan could hear a distinct thump, thump, thump in quick succession, and then saw a series of small dust clouds erupt around and then smash into one of the windows. The sound was like that of Lance’s M320 when he fired the 40mm. Fuck, Beard’s lot have got an automatic grenade launcher on top of one of their vehicles. Where did they get that?

  Lance wasn’t speaking on his head-set, then Dan realized he wouldn’t be able to hear anything that was coming in over the ringing in his ears anyway. The gunfire and explosions were so loud they had drowned out into a faint, distant hammering, replaced by an incessant ringing as his mind tried to block the onslaught of noise. He couldn’t hear Lance, but that was largely irrelevant. In the midst of the larger fire-fight they were both fighting their own, individual battles to survive. Dan knew his life was on the line. He could lie there, hunker down and he would survive. He was hidden, safe. But something deep within him, instinctive and drilled into his being, kicked in. Lance was out there. He had a job to do; he had a mission. He needed to fight, to help Lance, to keep the objective secure. He needed to fight. And to fight, he needed a plan. He needed to give Lance support.

  Dan’s eyes went to his line of 40mm grenades, then settled on the lone 40mm smoke. I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine, he thought, recalling the smoke screens Beard had thrown up yesterday. Dan clicked open the M320 underneath his rifle, pivoting the large cylindrical tube to the left. He slipped the smoke grenade into the breach and then locked in back into place with a solid click. Dan didn’t bother to raise the 320’s ladder sight but simply looked through his mini red-dot sight, lined it up on a building further away from the firefight and elevated the weapon slightly. His finger slipped around the grenade launchers trigger and pulled back, sending a large jolt down through his shoulder and pushing him back a few inches. The recoil was accompanied by a satisfying thud as the grenade left the launcher.

  Dan had propelled the smoke grenade further away from the target and, after crashing into a small garden alongside a door, the 40mm canister started to billow thick, white plumes. His plan worked and the bandits became fixated on the new source of smoke. The firing lifted from Lance’s building and instead started to hammer at the next one over. They think someone is trying to conceal movement or make a break for it. Only one of the men standing on the ground turned away from the smoke towards Dan’s location. He might have seen the dark blur of the grenade as it went passed, and Dan wasn’t going to give him a chance to investigate. He sighted the man in his ACOG, leveling the top-most aiming mark for targets out to 100m against the man’s chest. Dan fired and the man fell, his jaw split apart. Lights out. Now for the others.

  Dan opened the 320 launcher and the empty canister from the smoke round ejected effortlessly. Time for HE. No-one in the group had noticed their friend fall over, dead, or if they had they attributed his gunshot to return fire from the building they were now in the process of destroying. Target fixation is a powerful force and Dan wanted to take advantage of that. Throwing HE amongst them would cause carnage but, unlike a bullet zipping past, it would be harder to trace the source or direction it was being fired from. Dan slipped in a HEDP round and closed the launcher. He used the same vertical aim-off he had for the smoke round and sent his second 40mm grenade into the centre of the vehicles and men. It went off with a resounding thud against the cement pavement nearly a hundred meters from where Dan was, spraying the vicinity in which it impacted with thick black dust. He saw a body go flying backwards in front of the dark plume, and saw a number of vehicle windows cascade inwards. Already he was slamming in his third 40mm grenade and this time selected a more specific point of aim, lining up a vehicle engine he could see edging forward. The grenade found its target, lifting the rear of the vehicle off the ground half a meter as the impact pushed and pummeled at the vehicle’s chassis. The doors blew out and white smoke followed. While there wasn’t much explosive content in each of his 40mm grenades it was enough to do substantial damage to an un-armored vehicle, but it would be the small pieces of fragmented metal exploding outwards from each detonation that would be the real killer. Through the smoke and the dust he could see a number of figures
collapsing or rolling around on the ground. Dan reached for another round and punched this one into a vehicle to the left, then reached for his fourth. He lined up a few men who were coming towards him, weapons raised. The grenade missed them and went into the dust-strewn impact area. Dan couldn’t see its explosion but he did hear it detonate. The men were searching for him so he raised his ACOG and fired a long burst from left to right, seeking to catch them both in the hail of bullets. Both went to ground but Dan wasn’t sure whether it was from surprise or because he had hit them.

  Dan was executing the only plan he could think of – fire everything he had at the bandits in front of him – but it wasn’t going to be enough. Already he had a few of Beard’s men coming at him. He could only hope that his 40mm bombardment would be enough to allow Lance to get back into the fight. Beard. That bastard. Dan’s hatred returned and he loaded his second-to-last 40mm HEDP. The smoke and dust was thick and something was burning, creating a long black pillar that reached upwards. At least we’ve blunted their attack, Dan thought. He couldn’t see if they had stopped the entire convoy or if some trucks had gotten through, but they were doing everything they possibly could.

  Dan tried to select a point of aim for his next 40mm grenade when he saw the top of the pillar of smoke distort and then be thrown into a spiral. Dan immediately registered a few things simultaneously – a dark shadow rearing up over the killing area, a loud whack of rotor blades and a line of tracer and bullets reaching into and carving a pattern through the smoke. The Blackhawks! They were joining in! Dan kicked himself back into the vegetation, seeking to get as far back as he could. Already branches around him were snapping as bullets and ricochets crashed off the road and flicked overhead. The Blackhawk gunners were flying an attack profile up the road, ending their run above his firing position in the bushes. Even if they weren’t aiming at him he was at risk from the stray round or fragments from their killing area. Get back, get back, get back! Dan crawled rearwards in a crash of limbs and branches, powering over the body of the hack he had killed on the way in but not stopping to register it. He was clear of the tree line and he rolled onto his feet and continued his dash over open ground, ending against a building.

  “Friendly soldier, 11 o’clock off the axis of attack, don’t engage!” Hannah was airborne, coordinating the attack runs and looking out for Lance and himself. Dan waved up to the sky. One of the Blackhawk’s wheeled over-head, but the door-gunners kept their machine guns trained on the vehicle convoy and didn’t pay any attention to him.

  “Dan, moving in on you.” That was Lance’s voice. Dan felt a huge amount of tension subside within him. Lance was OK.

  “He’s further off to your left,” Hannah said, acting as an airborne controller. “Dan, I recommend you move back behind the building away from the engagement area. The Blackhawk’s are going to continue mopping up.”

  Dan moved around the building onto the rear street. He saw Lance further down, and they moved towards each other.

  “How’d you survive that?” Dan asked, noticing that Lance was covered in dust and debris but appeared uninjured.

  “I didn’t hang around to chance survival,” Lance answered, as they both took a knee alongside the street, facing past each other. Dan watched behind Lance, making sure nothing was going to surprise them, while Lance did the same over his back. The noise of the Blackhawk’s firing on each of their gun runs was loud, but they were close enough to each other to be able to talk at a reasonable volume. The hollow buzzing in Dan’s ears were subsiding, too, and he could hear Lance next to him without too much difficulty.

  “I engaged with a few hand grenades and then fled. They fixed the building with all forms of bullets, grenades and shit. I managed to get a few 40 mike-mike rounds off from behind the building before their fire built up and kept me stuck there, that is until you came into play. They didn’t realize where I was and kept trying to chew apart the front of the next building over, thinking we had a whole squad inside there or something.”

  Dan nodded. “I got surprised by a hack crawling into position. By the time I got over him, two of them, actually, one after the other, I started to pop some 40 mil down-range. First smoke and then HEDP. Worked a treat.” Dan took a moment to unload the HEDP he still had in his M320 and returned the unfired round to his vest.

  “Looks like it’s over,” Hannah chimed in over the radio. “The Blackhawks are returning to cover the next couple of Chinooks that are coming in. A dozen or so of the gang down there got away on foot, but they are fleeing back to Boulder. It looks like we’re safe. I can pick you up and take us back to the objective.”

  “Not yet,” Dan answered, “I want to check the engagement area.”

  ***

  Lance halted on the edge of the road and provided cover to Dan as he moved forward. The trucks were still smoking and a number of bodies littered the stretch of road. Both the HEDP and the machine-gun fire from the Blackhawks had devastated the scene, cutting apart those that were caught in the line of fire. Dan moved briskly through the smoking carnage.

  He found his target next to the truck he’d hit with a grenade early on in the engagement, blowing out the doors. The figure was sprawled on its side, legs curled up in a fetal position. Dan put his foot on the shoulder and rolled it over. It was Beard. He was gravely injured, with blood pooling around his wide stomach and one of his fore-arms had a deep wound along it. His mouth opened and closed but no noise came out. Dan kicked the only rifle nearby away, and then knelt down. Beard was conscious, just.

  “How does it feel to be helpless, waiting your death?” Dan growled. “Just like those men you gunned down yesterday. They didn’t stand a chance, and now you don’t, either.”

  Beard looked at him, fear flicking across his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you,” Dan said. “There are enough creatures out here who will, though,” as his mind returned to the image of the half consumed corpse in the bushes. “I’ll bet you won’t see the morning. I do hope you see through to nightfall, though, just so you can picture what awaits you once it is dark.”

  “Don’t,” Beard crocked, weakly. “Don’t.”

  Dan stood up and walked away, kicking the rifle even further from Beard’s grasp as he left. It would take him a lot of time and pain if we wanted to reach it in his current state, and even then it wouldn’t save him.

  “Hannah, we’re ready for pick up,” he transmitted.

  “Roger, inbound now.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  They didn’t bother returning to the factory. Hannah picked them up in the Lakota, and they nosed over and sped, at low altitude, to the Mesa Laboratory. Julia would be able to pass on their intent and there was no further need for them at the loading point.

  “Any plan?” Julia asked as they clipped themselves into the back-seat of the Lakota.

  Dan’s body was still dealing with the sudden ebb of adrenaline that had been surging through his veins barely minutes ago. His limbs felt heavy and his mind felt slow and tired. He glanced at Lance who looked back with the same sense of fatigue that Dan felt deep within his bones.

  “No,” Dan said into his microphone. “Just take us straight there. We’ll make it up as we go.”

  The flight was over in a few minutes. Dan wished he’d had longer to rest but he knew they needed to exploit the situation as quickly as possible. Beard and his group were dead; he knew that there were other patrols, the criminals and the gangs, still working for the man known as Drake, and everything he’d learnt about tactics pointed to the fact that they needed to strike before the enemy had identified their losses and regrouped a reserve. They wouldn’t be able to out-number the full force of Drake’s men in Boulder so they needed to use every other advantage available to them. Speed, aggression and surprise – something Dan had once heard a British officer refer to as ‘the urban warrior’s holy trinity’. He agreed - they needed to strike hard and fast, right the fuck now.

  The Mesa Lab, mor
e properly known as the NCAR or National Centre for Atmospheric Research as Julia had told them, was on the far side of Boulder, nestled into the foot-hills between the mountain ranges and the town’s suburbs. Dan and Lance knew they were close to their objective the moment they laid eyes on it, a group of buildings clustered together at the top of a small rise.

  The complex was a multi-storied, multi-building affair clad in a desert-pinkish hue which served, bizarrely, Dan thought, to help it blend in and almost camouflage itself into the surrounding hill country. It made the area seem military, like a legitimate target. It was the straight lines that made it stand out to the human eye, with every edge casting a slight shadow from the mid-afternoon sun. The buildings looked like they had been made by stacking an array of light red bricks on top of each other, some jutting out away from their base to give an angular, unnatural overhang. It was a large complex, too, with at least three multi-storied blocks rising above a long, rectangular slab. As they got closer Dan could see that the lower building alone was at least two stories tall. This complex was large, and there were only two of them – three, if you counted Hannah, but she was a pilot and wasn’t trained in the finer arts of door-kicking. Shit.

  The roads leading up to the building curved in front of the red NCAR lab, forming a large crescent-shaped car-park. Dan and Lance peered out as the scene rushed over them. Both could make out the familiar scenes of chaos that they had seen replicated across the state – some cars parked, some crashed, with bodies littering the sight. A few darker, bounding shapes let both of them know that this area wasn’t secure. Dan’s eyes moved to the building complex itself. It all seemed shut, but he could make out a pile of bodies massed around a few of the entrance ways.

  “It looks like they’ve barricaded themselves inside,” he said, as Hannah swung the helicopter into a vicious left-hand bank. Dan felt his chest and his neck press down against his spine, compressing his lungs and flooding his mind with a sudden, intense wave of nausea. He felt his neck tensing and his vision almost swim before him, before Hannah let the Lakota ease out of its turn.