Aftermath - 02

by D. J. Molles

  Whether he was hit or not, the man in the black shirt dipped into view, slightly lower than Lee expected, and began firing. Lee felt Julia smack him in the shoulder, trying to get his attention, but he focused through the sites and pulled the trigger, giving the man in the black shirt two heavy bursts to think about. The man jerked and flopped, clutching at his neck, his rifle clattering to the floor. Lee felt Julia pressing a finger against his right shoulder, and she was really digging it in deep.

  “What the fuck...” Lee snapped his head to the left, but Julia was just staring at him. He could see both her hands, and yet the pressure on his shoulder was becoming painfully intense.

  Julia suddenly pointed at him. “They...they shot you!”

  Lee rolled onto his side and craned his neck to see his shoulder. The hard pressure was becoming fiery, and he couldn’t help growling low through his grit teeth. It couldn’t be much more than a graze, he told himself, but the patch of blood on his shoulder was beginning to spread. He wanted to take his shirt off and check the wound, but he didn’t have the time.

  “It’s fine,” he said, stubbornly, because there was nothing else to do. He didn’t have a combat medic, he didn’t have any supplies to fix himself, and looking at the wound wouldn’t do him any good at this juncture. He told himself that it wasn’t that bad, despite the pain. Sometimes pain can be deceiving. Superficial wounds often feel the worst.

  There was a brief lull in the overwhelming noise, and Lee could hear the two men from down the hall. The exchange was one-sided, as all the man in the black shirt was doing was gurgling, desperately trying to get oxygen to his lungs and sucking in blood instead. He kept blubbering and coughing, and his comrade across the hall from him kept yelling at him, as though he were going to get a different answer.

  “Wes! Wes! Get your fuckin’ ass up! Come on, man! You okay? Snap out of it!”

  Lee didn’t think he was going to snap out of it.

  “Wes? Can you hear me?”

  “gggllrrgullpgrg”

  “Come on, man! Don’t leave me by myself!”

  “gaaaghagllulpgggl”

  Lee was so fixated on the strange and macabre conversation, that he almost didn’t hear the tiny voice right next to him. When it finally registered he turned to face Julia and found her holding the radio out to him as though it were some foreign device that she knew nothing about.

  Lee snatched the radio up and keyed it. “Is someone there? Anyone can copy me, this is Captain Harden.”

  There was a burst of static, and Lee thought that it was just a cruel joke, that the air waves would go dead again, leaving him hopeless. But almost immediately after the static, the mic crackled again and he heard Harper’s voice and didn’t think he’d ever been as happy to hear another man talk to him.

  “Captain?! Is that you? This is Harper!”

  Lee couldn’t help but grin. “I copy you loud and clear, Harper. I’m at the hospital. We are pinned down by infected and Milo’s men. We need help here, buddy, and we need it yesterday.”

  “Alright, Captain.” There was shuffling on the other side and Lee thought he could hear the sound of a vehicle’s engine accelerating to a roar. “We’re coming down the boulevard now, and we got help with us. Just hang on. We’re almost...” There was a long, interminable silence, followed by, “Holy shit!”

  And then the sound from the radio was gunfire and screaming.

  CHAPTER 21: ...WAS YESTERDAY

  Lee tried to key the radio, but Harper was still transmitting and the radio only gave back a negative tone as if to say, you can’t do that yet...please wait...

  “Motherfucker!” Lee squeezed the radio in his hand and shook the thing around. Finally, the transmission ended with a quiet whisper of static. Julia was staring at him with her hands over her mouth. Will was looking at the ground with his head resting on his baseball bat as though all hope was lost. Even LaRouche’s face was half-turned to him, but it was the wounded and sightless side, and he quickly looked back down the hall.

  Lee keyed up, trying to stay calm. “Harper, this is Captain Harden. Are you okay? We heard gunfire. Harper, are you there?”

  To his credit, Harper took the time to respond. It was short and clipped and barely audible over the gunfire in the background, but it told them he was okay, at least for that moment: “Can’t talk!”

  Lee snatched the M249 off the ground, peeking around the corner as he did and seeing the man who had run across the hall, darting back into the stairwell as though fleeing for his life. It gave Lee a savage sense of satisfaction. That was, until he heard LaRouche’s voice and realized it wasn’t Lee the man was afraid of.

  “They’re comin’ through! We gotta go!” And then he fired once, twice, and then three-four-five. From the direction of the eastern stairwell Lee heard something heavy fall and slide on the tile ground.

  Lee shoved the radio in his back pocket again and brought the M249 up, the bullet wound in his right shoulder screaming. He moved to LaRouche’s corner and gave the sergeant a hard slap on the shoulder to indicate he was taking over. Still sighting down his rifle, LaRouche shoved off the corner and moved out into the middle of the hall.

  Lee aimed his weapon down the eastern side of the building. The infected horde had manage to shove the makeshift barricade far enough that there was about a six-inch gap between the filing cabinet and the doorframe. It was narrow, but it was an opening. Lee watched an infected with long and dirty hair shove herself through, head first, and then squirm past the barricade. He was briefly reminded of something his father had said when they were surprised to find a raccoon in their garage after leaving the overhead door cracked just a few inches.

  “If they can get their head through, they’ll find a way to get their body through.”

  The infected was doing just that, pulling its chest through, showing no sign of pain at how it crushed her breasts, and then she had her torso through and the rest was easy.

  Lee stepped out into the hall, because there was no purpose in taking cover when there was no one shooting back at him. He yelled over his shoulder, “Get the fuck out of here!” and started shooting. He zipped the infected woman with a five round burst, every shot finding its mark except for the last one, punching holes in her from her left hip all the way to her right shoulder and down she went.

  Behind him, he could hear rapid footfalls as Julia and Will and LaRouche beat a hasty retreat for the elevator doors. Lee started to back up, keeping his weapon trained on the breach in their barricade and thanking God that it wasn’t bigger. In a way, it was a blessing that they had managed to shove the barricade only six inches. It distracted them enough that they appeared to no longer be attempting to push the barricade, but it was narrow enough that only one fit through at a time.

  Lee was foolishly taking solace in this when he heard gunfire coming from the western side. It was the nasty sound of LaRouche’s AK-47, followed by a short pause, a shotgun blast, and then the popping sound of a small-caliber pistol. Had LaRouche already run out of ammunition on the AK-47 and transitioned to his 9mm?

  He waited until the next infected was trying to shove itself through the breach at the stairwell and popped its head right where it was stuck between the cabinet and the doorframe, creating a nice blockage in the already-tight space. Lee was about halfway from the nurses’ station to the northern end of the hospital wing where the bank of elevators stood. He turned and made up the last thirty feet at a dead sprint. When he hit the back wall to stop, the scene at the elevators was mass confusion.

  The elevator doors had been pried open. Three men were standing in a line in front of the yawning hole of the elevator shaft. Their feet were braced wide, and their arm muscles bunched as they all held tightly to a rope that looked like it bore a heavy load. The rope was secured to a hospital bed that was wedged in an open door behind them and, little by little, they released the slack, lowering someone down the shaft. All three of them looked scared, but the lead one was completely focus
ed on the elevator shaft while the other two looked around fearfully, trying to see where the threats were coming from.

  Around them, a cluster of people scrambled about. They were trying to find a safe place to hide, but there was no escape except down the elevator shaft. One of the men kept moving to the open shaft and looking down with his hands clenched in his hair, as though he were contemplating how badly injured he would be if he made the jump.

  Behind it all, LaRouche and two other armed men were covering the western hall and taking pot shots at whatever was down there. In Lee’s back pocket, he could hear Harper squawking, but he couldn’t talk right now. He worked his way through the panicked cluster of people and managed to get LaRouche’s attention by screaming his name.

  Whatever they were shooting at down the hall seemed to be taking a lot of firepower, while the breach in the barricade was only leaking one or two infected at a time. It only made sense for them to post the M249 on the most troublesome corner. Lee made the call and LaRouche did what was asked of him without hesitation and moved to cover the eastern hall.

  Lee took the corner as the others vacated the area. Bullets split the air close to his face and smacked the wall behind him. The acrid smell of cordite stung his nose. Numerous voices yelled from behind and in front of him, each vying for his attention. The senses became overwhelmed.

  This was combat. You created the chaos, but at the same time, tried not to be a part of it, tried not to be affected by it. It was a strange mix of hot-blooded instinct, and cold-blooded logic. It was fighting with emotion, but thinking with your head, almost as though your mind was the handler and your body the beast, the two of them at odds, and yet oddly the same. And when the two forces fell into step with each other, it was sickening and exhilarating all at once.

  These were not things that Lee thought about in the moment, they were just things that he instinctively knew, the same as when you drop a ball, you know it will fall to the ground. In his mind there were only priorities—Move to the corner; evaluate the threat down the hall; deal with the threat down the hall; re-evaluate where the M249 needs to be; get the survivors to safety—and then a slurry of thoughts and experiences underneath it all that guided his actions.

  When he turned the corner he found the man in the black shirt running straight at him, with no weapon in his hand. He had almost reached the hallway that bisected the hospital rooms and led to the nurses’ station. Their eyes locked, and there was nothing in that man’s expression but fear and pleading. Behind him and pouring out of the western stairwell were dozens of infected.

  Lee realized that though they had barricaded the entry to this level, all the infected had to do was go up one more floor. They must have been running through that floor, attacking Milo’s men and forcing them back into the stairwell. The man in the black shirt had either dropped his rifle because it ran out of ammunition, or he felt it slowed him down.

  He waved his empty hands and screamed, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  Lee grit his teeth and pulled the trigger anyway.

  His first burst took the man’s legs out from under him. The man looked shocked and dismayed as he fell to the ground, and no matter the steel of Lee’s cold resolve, the look on that man’s face would always be a crystal clear picture in his mind of what he was capable of when it was Us-versus-Them.

  An infected teenage boy leapt nimbly over the fallen form, completely ignoring the easy kill and still heading straight for Lee, its eyes wild with aggression. It caught Lee’s second burst and veered off to the right where it smacked the wall and then fell to the floor, still breathing, but not moving.

  The man Lee had shot in the leg started screaming and Lee thought it was more in fear than in pain. Two skinny, wraith-like creatures pounced on him, smothering his screams. To Lee’s surprise, one took hold of the man’s arm and one grabbed his head and they dragged him back around the corner where they could feed in relative safety. Did they recognize that Lee could kill them if they stayed out in the open, or did they simply view him as competition for food? Whatever their reasons, they wiggled backwards and fixed Lee with an animal stare that communicated the same message as a growling dog: Don’t come any closer...this is mine...

  Lee felt his skin prickle into goosebumps.

  Their kill safely behind the wall, more infected turned off into the hall and Lee could just make out flailing arms and legs as their prey screamed hoarsely. This time it was pain that Lee heard. The scene affected Lee on a visceral level, causing his arms to begin to shake and his stomach to feel hollow and weak. He began firing indiscriminately and had to force himself under control. He sent more rounds down range, each burst raising the muzzle of his weapon, then he would level it and let it burst again.

  You did that, Lee thought. You own it.

  From the other corner, Lee could here the sporadic popping of LaRouche’s pistol and the occasional blast from a shotgun. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that only LaRouche and two other men remained. One of the other men was helping LaRouche cover the corner with his shotgun, and the second was positioning himself to rope down the elevator shaft.

  “How you lookin’?” Lee yelled to LaRouche.

  “Clear for now...”

  Three more infected burst out of the western stairwell. Lee raked the hall with fire, killing two of them instantly and taking the third one down to the ground where it scrabbled forward with one working arm and one working leg, its screech of fury turning to a pathetic coughing, yelping noise.

  “Move out!” LaRouche yelled, and out of the corner of his eye, Lee saw the man with the shotgun making a run for the elevator shaft. The sergeant followed up his command with a quick double-tap from his pistol, and the slide locked back, empty. “I’m out!”

  “Got you covered. Move!” Lee called out.

  LaRouche spun and made for the elevator shaft. The man with the shotgun was standing at the edge and looking down, calling to someone before dropping his shotgun down to them. Then he swung onto the rope and slipped out of sight. LaRouche knelt down quickly and took a hold of the rope. Lee didn’t see him descend because he forced his attention back to the hallway.

  Five more were coming out of the western stairwell, and another staggered out from the hallway where the man in the black shirt had gone quiet, a stringy piece of flesh hanging from its chin. It tottered around like it was drunk until the other five raced past it, and then it turned and followed suit, like any good herd animal.

  Lee let out burst after burst, but they were fast, and they were getting closer. The last one collapsed nearly at his feet, causing him to jump back and let out a yelp as his mind prepared for the filthy thing to sink its teeth into his leg. It raised its head, still alive, and reached out in a slow, deliberate grab for Lee’s feet and Lee lost his cool for just a moment. He held the trigger down, the hallway flashing bright like a strobe as each of the bullets did their damage and left a mess of broken floor tiles and gore.

  More were coming from the western stairwell, and more were coming out of the hallway, no longer interested in the fresh kill. The eastern hallway, now abandoned and unwatched, screamed for his attention. He knew how these things liked to attack from both sides.

  He backed up so that his feet were just inches from the drop off of the elevator shaft and he could cover both corners. His mouth felt full of sand, his rapid breathing like a harsh desert wind, sucking all the moisture out of him. His pulse stretched the arteries in his neck, almost painfully. In the back of his mind he registered tunnel vision setting in, and he forced himself to scan back and forth, back and forth. His whole world became the gun-site of the M249 with a background of the right corner, and then the left corner. Right corner. Left corner.

  They came from the western hall first, running like they knew exactly where he was. There was no hesitation as they turned the corner and were instantly upon him. He couldn’t back up—all he could do was fight. They screeched and he screamed back and held that trigger d
own like you’re not supposed to do, but they were so close to him now that it really didn’t matter.

  The air in the hallway seemed to dim with a thin pink mist erupting out of dark, polluted flesh and Lee closed his mouth and held his breath, though his body ached for more oxygen. Vaguely, he registered the sound of his radio squawking and could hear people at the bottom of the elevator shaft calling his name.

  Three more infected from the western hallway, and one from the eastern hallway.

  Even as they rounded the corner, only twenty feet away from him on either side, he knew he wouldn’t be able to continue this fight. He was only delaying the inevitable.

  He swept the hallway with another gale of chattering machine gun fire, hoping to stall the encroaching infected for just a beat. Still holding the M249 with his right hand, he used his left to wrap the rope around his forearm twice and gripped it hard in his left hand. He knew this was going to hurt, but he didn’t have the time to formulate a better plan, and any plan is better than no plan at all.

  With the rope in hand, he leapt backwards.

  The last clear image he saw was two hands reaching out for his face, long dirty fingernails and skin caked with unimaginable grime. And then he was falling into that dark abyss and he could feel the acceleration of his own body through the air and it felt similar to a combat jump: dark and noisy and terrifying.

  Then the slack on the rope ran out.

  The cord went tight, ripping and sliding across the flesh of his left arm. He felt explosions in his joints, first his wrist, then his elbow, and the burning sensation was so intense in the palm of his hand and in the coil around his forearm that it nearly masked the tearing of his ligaments. He felt like he fell forever, building up heat as he went, like a meteor breaking the atmosphere and he was convinced his arm was catching fire. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get a grip on the rope tight enough to stop his body from plummeting to the ground, and towards the end, the burning was so hot, he almost didn’t care.