LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  A sudden burst of flame as the fuel inside ignited on impact, and the helicopter slammed into the ground, incinerating the small crowd that had assembled to greet it.

  I clapped Ky on the shoulder and smiled.

  “How’s it feel to be in the club?” I asked.

  She looked up at the sky.

  “Ask me at sunrise.”

  “School Bus, you’re clear for landing. Five and a half persons for evac.” Rhodes’ voice was almost happy.

  Almost.

  *

  The helicopter rose sullenly in the night sky, blades thumping heavily as we moved away from the hellish building that had almost become our tomb.

  Beneath us, the city was alternately quiet and awash with movement, as we passed dead neighborhoods, empty of zombies, and major thoroughfares where the larger groups of creatures had massed together as they moved south. Unlikely through design, but through sheer physics, they had found the largest, widest roadways to take them through the city like water following the path of least resistance. The interstates groaned with the numbers, but I noted that they seemed slightly fewer than they had hours before.

  Perhaps there was, in fact, and end to them somewhere. Perhaps they were all at the fort.

  Perhaps we were already too late.

  “Last message we got was millions of these shitheads were outside SeaTac,” I leaned forward to the young pilot. “Is that true?”

  He glanced back, eyes serious.

  “Yes sir. First group started trickling in about twelve hours ago. That was the group from the south. Then, four hours later, we got another huge herd from the east. They had been amassing on the northern wall for hours, but that just got critical in the last few hours.”

  “Millions?”

  He looked to the copilot and then back to me, shrugging.

  “There’s a fuck ton sir. I would guess that millions is about right.”

  I sat back heavily. Kate’s eyes were on me and I simply stared back, empty of words.

  Next to me, Rhodes was slowly unwinding a portion of his bandage.

  “What are you doing?” said Diana, watching him pull the gauze away.

  “I don’t know—it just started itching really bad,” he said, hand moving underneath the last layer of bandages tentatively. “And the pain is fading—”

  He stopped talking and pulled the last layer of cloth away.

  A pale patch of smooth skin extended over where the fracture had punctured the skin. Flaking, dried blood chipped off as Rhodes ran a hand over the area.

  “Holy shit,” he said softly.

  “Folks, you may want to take a look, here,” the pilot said over the comms, and we followed his suggestion, looking out the sides of the aircraft.

  As we approached from the north of the city, the creatures extended for miles on all sides. Even in the dark of the night, the moon provided all the light we needed to see the horror below.

  Endless waves of flesh and bone surged between buildings and over roadways; they flowed between wrecked cars and over debris and trash. Like ants crawling toward a meal, they were relentless in their march. From the city center south, they were legion and they were constant.

  I wanted to puke.

  There were too many. Too goddamned many.

  We had to be too late. What good does immunity do when you’re outnumbered already by ten thousand to one?

  The chopper stayed high while we passed the massed creatures below, flipping on its lights as we approached the fort.

  They were like a tide of bodies, crashing against the metal walls in surges. Pressed against the walls, then the motion abated, then moved again. With each surge of bodies, the added pressure of the thousands upon thousands of creatures writhing behind multiplied the force at the front of the mass. Already, pulpy bodies could be seen crushed against the metal walls, forming a small layer of dead and oozing flesh below.

  The defenders had one job that I could see.

  To burn and liquefy the bodies at the base of the walls as fast as possible. As they were pressed into a bloody pulp beneath the feet of their fellow creatures, they raised the ground that much more, slowly giving the surging attackers more height upon which to grasp for the edge of the wall, three full stories above.

  In alternating bursts, miniguns let loose a raking blast of fire designed to move creatures away from the walls long enough for the flamethrowers to do their work. Bodies flamed up and disintegrated in the thousands, but it was a drop in the bucket.

  The same scene was repeated on all sides, making for a fascinating show in pyrotechnics and fireworks.

  We banked hard to the right, then back to the left to make a fast approach to the landing strip. As we passed the runway, two large cargo planes took off in quick sequence, one after the other, rising quickly into the air and banking hard, one to the left, and one to the right.

  “What’s the op?” I asked, watching them climb to a low altitude and begin circling.

  “Napalm,” he said shortly. “We’ve been flying it in for days now. We were waiting on you to return, since we were concerned about visibility after we lit it up.”

  I nodded, and watched as hell began to rain down on the zombies outside.

  Small canisters started falling from the rear of the large planes like gumballs out of a broken machine. As the helicopter lowered to the height of the walls, I saw the explosions of flame begin.

  In a massive circle around the airport, buildings, cars, and thousands of zombies instantly ignited as the thick, gelatinous liquid coated and stuck to bodies and structures alike. A loud whooshing sound was audible, even here, as the oxygen was literally sucked from the air as the flaming compound laid waste to the bodies it consumed.

  The sky ignited in flame, and the defenders on the walls cheered loudly, even if it was only a brief reprieve. The planes, having exhausted their payload, made a quick circle and started to return.

  The sky was now only smoke and the licking tongues of orange and red outside the walls as the helicopter set down on the tarmac close to an old hangar bay.

  “Thanks, Chief,” I said quickly and jumped down.

  We were met by a still-serious looking Lieutenant Colonel Garcia, along with Major Gaffney, who smiled widely and unselfconsciously at seeing us dismount from the helo with a large backpack and several new people.

  “Mike,” said Gaffney, pressing past Garcia, who still held a clipboard in one hand.

  “Major,” I said, smiling.

  “Lieutenant Colonel now, actually. Promotions are easy to come by when you’re running out of officers,” he threw off self-deprecatingly.

  “Mr. McKnight,” said Garcia, “I assume you were successful?” He looked past me at the crew moving away from the slowing rotor blades.

  “At what?”

  “At… I’m sorry, at retrieving Dr. Kopland?”

  “Who?”

  I tried not to crack a smile.

  He finally realized that I was joking, and stared for several seconds before Gaffney chuckled once.

  “This way. Finnigan’s chomping at the bit to see you.”

  We turned and followed them into the hangar, a new location for the command center. Closer to the north wall, and larger. As we went inside, I could see why. Small banks of electronics surrounded a large map and constantly updating figures on charts above the commander’s desk. They were tracking fuel consumption, ammo reserves, and casualties, among other things.

  “Sir,” a young radio operator said to the Colonel, who was leaning over the large map as we walked in. “South wall reports good fire on their side. Estimates coming in of ten to twenty thousand down.”

  “Thanks, Corporal,” said Finnigan as we approached. He looked up at our entrance and smiled.

  “Now there is a group of happy assholes I never expected to see again,” he said, extending his hand.

  “I thought you gave us a 50/50 shot?” I said, taking his large hand and shaking it once.

  He la
ughed.

  “Yeah, well. I’m a crappy Army man, but I’m a great poker player, Mr. McKnight.”

  He hugged Kate and Ky informally, and Kate spoke quickly.

  “Colonel, this is Dr. Kopland and his assistant, Diana.”

  He shook the Doctor’s hand as Kopland looked him seriously in the eye.

  “We did it, Colonel. We synthesized a new serum. The fatal after effects are gone, but the other side effects are permanent.” He was concise and to the point.

  Finnigan stared for a moment, and then nodded.

  “Garcia!” he yelled quickly, before realizing that the man was standing to his left.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Have the medics start rotating men in for the shots—”

  “Uh, Colonel? We actually have a solution to that as well.”

  His eyebrows rose as we informed him of the aerosolized solution, and he smiled again.

  “Can we borrow a chopper?”

  *

  They sent out the news across all their networks as fast as they could. From the lowest private to the President herself, the remnants of the United States of America now had a fighting chance. The units that had received early doses would be rotated back in for the curative cocktail, or as Kopland put it, the ‘stop sign’ additive. The remainder of the units across the country would receive the aerosolized doses, enhancing their ability to fight and to fight back.

  We would only be able to fight in the darkness.

  We were still the minority.

  We were still on the verge of extinction.

  But now, we had a chance. A real chance.

  And we didn’t intend to go down without a fight.

  As we circled the outside of the fortifications, smoke billowed above a ring of fire outside. The fire was still so hot that every corpse that stepped through it ignited. I watched as the minigunners dispatched those left inside the ring of flames that surrounded the walls, and the flamethrowers burned the piles of corpses in droves. Thousands of gallons of napalm and fuel were being rushed to airplanes and flamethrower embankments every hour, and the fifty caliber heavy guns and miniguns mounted at intervals were only silent while they kept from reheating.

  Slowly, the defenders made some headway, thanks only to the delaying and all-consuming effects of the napalm.

  Kopland and Diana had helped the mechanics design a quick retrofit to an old flamethrower, and the pressurized contents of the vaccine were straightlined into the dispenser. Another helo was mounted with a similar machine, and we now circled the compound on opposite sides waiting for the signal.

  “Waiting for your mark, Colonel,” I said over the comms equipment. “Kate, how’s your end?”

  “Good to go here,” she said from the other helo.

  “Angels One and Two, this is SeaTac actual. You are ordered to dispense the material at the end of a three count, copy?”

  “Copy, sir,” both pilots stated consecutively.

  After several seconds, I depressed the trigger on the device, and watched as the mist floated down merely five hundred feet to the defenders on the walls. Across the compound, the other helicopter mimicked our actions. As we reached the starting area for the other vehicle, both machines broke to the left, and started a pattern to disperse over the entire camp. It took only fifteen minutes to cover the entire area.

  “Inoculations complete,” Kate said triumphantly, as we circled for a landing.

  Suddenly, a voice shot through the comms.

  “Break, break. SeaTac actual, this is gate control, north side. We have a breach. I repeat, we have a breach!”

  It was the main gate. The double backstopped primary entrance.

  It seemed impossible.

  The pilot circled tightly and it took merely seconds to see the problem.

  It wasn’t just a breach. There were hundreds of them inside the perimeter.

  “Gate control, SeaTac actual, what the fuck is going on out there!”

  I watched as hundreds of creatures flowed through a ten foot gap in the inner perimeter wall, underneath the suspended container that acted as a final barrier, as several Humvees rolled toward the gate. The two fifty caliber guns stationed on the inside to control for the possibility of several creatures making their way in were going to be overwhelmed quickly.

  Behind those stations, troops rushed to the gap, small arms fire increasingly quickly below. The flood of creatures pressed forward, the sporadic small arms an insufficient defense.

  “Sir, minigun misfire…made a hole in the west side of the second backstop wall. Fuckers flooded right into the gap. The inner gate was open for a small team to secure the locking mechanism.”

  “Well shut the goddamned gate!”

  The pilot circled again and I could see the problem.

  They had tried. It was jammed.

  “Sir, we tried that. Too many of those shits were underneath. A few bodies got jammed up in the mechanism. We can’t lower the gate without removing the jam.”

  I tapped the pilot on the shoulder.

  “Can you get us a look at the breach?”

  He nodded and banked to the right, pulling us out and over the walls of containers, three levels high, and to the side of the backstops at the front gate. Thousands upon thousands of creatures writhed against one another, some of them still flaming from the napalm attacks. At the corner where the backstop extended out from the main wall, I saw the problem. A ten foot gap of twisted steel and smoking metal, through which concentrated masses of creatures were pushing themselves, heedless of the razor sharp metal edges tearing their flesh.

  “Lieutenant, focus your fire on the hole,” said Finnigan sharply, voice high and directive. “Fifty cal only, I repeat, fifty cal only. Keep them from coming in.”

  “Copy, sir.”

  The pilot brought the helo into a hover a hundred feet above the melee as two stations of fifty-caliber machine guns let loose into the gap in the containers. Bodies pressed into a narrow space exploded against themselves, spreading flesh against the pushing, rotting corpses around them. Tracer rounds guided the streams of gunfire into the gap, precisely directing the current of lead into the waiting bodies.

  For their part, the corpses did their best to play nice. Even as those in front were ripped to shreds, those behind pushed into the gap. Thousands upon thousands waited behind for their turn.

  We broke station and passed back over the wall, where the situation was getting more serious. The fifty cal embankments were only twenty feet from getting overrun. Miniguns fired sporadically from the walls as troops left their stations nearby to run to the aid of their comrades. But no one was prepared for a massive breach with no warning. The two machine gun stations were smoking as tracer rounds smashed into the horde of bodies flooding into the fort. Three Humvees had arrived, their guns blazing as they pulled broadside to the flood of bodies and tried to narrow the angle of approach.

  Behind the gunners, individual men and women were firing side arms and rifles, trying to take headshots in the darkness and chaos. Spotlights crisscrossed the maelstrom of churning bodies and exploding corpses.

  The flood of bodies had slowed, but it was still too many.

  Somehow, they were still making their way through the small gap. The gate had to be sealed or they would push past this line. There were too many and we were too few.

  I looked on as an Abrams tank rolled forward, massive turret rotating toward the creatures. A gunner stood at the top, focusing his weapon on the crowd as well, adding to the force of bodies.

  Still too many of them. Too few of us.

  I scanned the chaos below and made my decision, pointing at a particular spot twenty feet behind the line of action.

  “Can you get me down there?” I yelled to the pilot.

  He shot me a glance and looked down, then nodded briefly. The helo began to descend, turning broadside to the flood of creatures and bringing one side of the helicopter to face the influx of zombies.

  As the
skids moved within ten feet of the ground, the first of the herd of creatures reached the first fifty cal gunner. He stood his ground until the end, cutting bodies in half with a final burst from his gun, shouting defiance into the mouths of the ghouls that bore him to the ground, obscuring him instantly. Some stopped to eat, more flooded past.

  I dropped from the hovering machine and rolled, coming to my feet near a small tent and a collection of equipment. Men streamed past, small arms firing in accompaniment to the larger staccato of the heavier machine guns.

  A flamethrower leaned against the tanks of fuel next to a supply tent, and I quickly shrugged into the equipment. Placing the nozzle in my left hand, I drew my sidearm with my right.

  “Break, break,” I said, cutting through the orders on the channel. “This is Mike, I’m heading for the gap—I’m going to clear the bodies. Give me cover. Put some fire on the break in the backstop—they will walk through it, but it slows them down. Can you move that tank up closer? I need to slow down the flow.”

  The net was silent for a moment, as I approached the line. Gunfire was fast and furious as a rain of metal met a tide of flesh. Corpses fell mere feet from the gunners, a body-to-body press of rotting, dead flesh pressing forward.

  Maybe this wasn’t a great idea.

  “All units at the gate,” Finnigan said quickly over the comms, deciding not to argue with an idiot who was willing to wade into a herd of zombies. “Concentrate fire on McKnight’s vector—keep him mobile. Watch his sides and get him to the gate. Heavy Four Six, move lateral to the gate and try to keep them off his left.”

  A flood of copy receipt messages hit the net as I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  The gunfire shifted as I raised the nozzle of the flamethrower at head level and released the flames in front of me. In the flood of bodies, I didn’t hope to kill them. I didn’t hope to stop them.

  I simply hoped to blind them with the fire.

  I hoped that their eyes would melt.

  I aimed high, taking those in front of me and to my sides full in the face with the jet of fire, sparing a bullet for those directly in front, pushing the bodies aside as they fell, flaming piles of flesh. The press of bodies was fearsome, and I felt mouths close on my arms and legs as I passed, flames working on those I hit, but other bodies pushing in.