by J. L. Bourne
The massive stream of flames sent corpses tumbling down over thousands of arms, legs, heads, and torsos. The undead slowly but deliberately kept driving forward, unable to be concerned with their own attrition. Every one of them that was fried and fell upon the charred pile of corpses below added to the foundation that would slowly but eventually give the creatures passage to the roof, inevitably overtaking the entire building like ants on a dropped ice cream cone. Judging by the raw numbers of burned and dismembered bodies, it appeared that this giant formation of corpses had been slowly constructed over some time; the undead being the bricks and the men with flamethrowers the masons.
I sat there watching the flamethrower deliver hell on the undead and wondered how the survivors kept from burning the building down. The creatures aflame had to be touching the building’s exterior. Whoever was firing that from the rooftop was using their last option: Do not pass Go; flame or death. I slung my pack to the ground, lying prone over it with my binos. I could see only two men on the roof. I also saw a balloon hovering above the roof access structure. It was just like the dead soldier’s antenna balloon from when I found the GARMR. I was too far away to make out fine details. Eyes down in the binoculars, I lost situational awareness.
As I stared at the flames attacking the ramp with extreme prejudice, the wind was suddenly knocked out of me by a growling mass of fur. Some sort of wild dog had grabbed my shemagh at the nape of my neck and begun to shake back and forth, making breathing impossible. I saw stars and began to flail and punch blindly against my attacker. I now had the large dog in a bear hug, and it still had a death grip on my shemagh; I had to rotate it to the front of my neck.
With my shemagh locked tightly in the dog’s jaws, I went forward with it, tumbling into a culvert and hitting my shoulder against the concrete. I could make out the dog’s white fangs in the light of the bright flamethrower. The dog was heavily scarred, missing an ear, the outline of undead jaws in its place. I pulled my bayonet but it was too late; the feral dog jumped. I tried to stab it through the neck but it was all I could do to keep it at bay, keep it from biting through my jugular, spilling my blood everywhere. It would then wait for me to bleed out and go unconscious before eating me half alive as my brain shut down in the darkness. If the dog left my brain in one piece, I’d wake up and try to join the great undead ramp that was being built over there, fire-hardened by the most badass flamethrower I’d ever seen.
I felt the wet muzzle of the animal under my chin just before the loud yelp. The feral beast was tossed several feet away by the charging GARMR. After hitting the beast so hard I thought I heard ribs crack, Checkers took a defensive posture between the wild dog and me. The GARMR cocked its head to the side as it always does, and so did the dog. Sizing one another up, the dog didn’t like what it was looking at, so it turned and ran off into the tall grass.
I was scratched up from its claws and I thought it might have nicked my forearm on its fangs, but I’d be okay for now. I didn’t stop to notice if its mouth was foaming, but I was quadruple-digit miles from the nearest possible rabies shot; I just had to make things work.
I patted the GARMR on its titanium head and thanked it out loud for its performance. Would it understand me? I don’t know, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I really hope that some special ops team on the ground in Afghanistan had one of these before everything went to shit. It would have been a valuable thing to have around.
I checked the saddlebags on the machine, confirming that my extra 5.56 mags were still inside. Removing those and placing them in my cargo pockets, I slung my pack and my M4 and looked for some high ground to set up shop.
The first hint of sunlight was beginning to peek over the trees. I needed to hurry. I had no shelter and was surrounded by undead near enough that I couldn’t escape if detected. I had a loud gun, suppressed or not.
I broke through some foliage and arrived at an opening in the trees. Just up ahead, I could see a large playground with a fort and a tunnel slide. I slowly crept to it, keeping aware of my surroundings. The large wooden fort had two ways up—three if you counted going up the corkscrew tunnel slide.
Ladder or steps?
I stepped up onto the fort and climbed on the roof, giving me a view of the top floor of the building as well as the immediate playground area. The GARMR negotiated the first step and went into standby mode within ten feet of where I was at the mouth of the corkscrew slide. I was about fifteen feet off the ground, with multiple ways down if too many creatures showed up and cornered me.
I unslung my pack and pulled out my small handset radio. I dialed up the Morse freq—nothing—and then the voice recording freq—nothing. Switching frequencies to the UHF band, I began to spin and grin, looking for anything that sounded like communications. After finding nothing, I went out on the common Motorola two-way freqs I had written down in my notebook and began to broadcast in the blind. You’d be surprised how many survivors had small Motorola radios.
“Wachovia Tower, I’ve received your distress call. Is anyone out there?” I keyed, sending my voice at the speed of light out into the rotting wind.
Day 27
The sun peeked up over the horizon, revealing the ant-like movements of the mass of corpses piled up the side of the building. As soon as my watch said 0600, another burst of flames erupted from the roof down onto the apex of the mass. It wouldn’t be long now. My radio crackled.
“Station calling Wachovia Tower; please come in,” a voice I recognized from the recording said.
Fishing for my handset, I keyed a response, identifying myself by my name, rank, and home area.
“Commander? Of Hourglass?” the voice on the radio said.
I rogered up to the affirmative and could hear hoots and hollers from atop the building hundreds of meters distant.
“How many with you, sir?” the man asked.
“Just me, I’m afraid,” I responded.
There was a long silence before the defeat-stricken voice responded.
“Commander, might as well turn back. Don’t know if you can see, but we’re surrounded on all sides. A hundred thousand dead, maybe. The bottom half of the building is compromised; we did everything we could, but they just kept coming, piling up, and smashing through the floors as the corpses stack higher.”
“What about the goddamned cure?” I said, annoyed that they’d written off their chances of getting out.
“We have it, but there’s only two canisters of chemical coolant remaining. We lost generator power a week ago, and without chemical coolant the RF-shielded container needs to be plugged in to 110 soon to keep the cure viable,” the voice said.
“Who am I talking to?” I asked.
After a short pause, the radio beeped before the response: “Doc, Task Force Phoenix.”
“Damn good to hear your voice, Doc. Can you toss the transport container off the building?”
“No, the tech says the coolant unit wouldn’t survive the impact. We’ve got three parachutes from the Hotel 23 drop with us. We thought about BASE jumping off the roof and catching a lucky breeze, but there are just too many fucking zombies down there. We’d land on top of them, Commander,” Doc responded.
“First off, I’m Kil. Neither of us has been paid in two years, so let’s lose the formalities. How much ammo?” I asked.
“We’re dry. All we got are homemade flamethrowers. We still have our M4s, but the bolts are locked back, dry as fuck,” Doc said.
“Roger,” I said flatly.
“Me and Billy don’t blame you if you skin out. There ain’t no way up here unless you got a helicopter we don’t know about.”
“I’m not leaving you up there. How many you got in the building with you?”
“We’re overrun two floors below, all the way to the ground. They climbed in the windows and took most of us out. We’ve got me, Billy Boy, and a CDC researcher, bit yesterday when we lost the sixteenth floor. He knows he’s not gonna make it,” said Doc.
“Thought you guys had the cure up there.”
“We were briefed that it doesn’t work like that,” Doc said, annoyed by my question.
“How much longer before they pile up to the roof?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Kil. Tonight? Tomorrow, maybe. We only have one can of fuel left for the flamethrowers. They keep clawing their way up here, and pretty soon we’ll be fighting them at eye level, hand to hand.”
“Sit tight, Doc, I’m coming for you.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
Nova
My pockets were jammed with 5.56 mags and the M4 Commando was slung across my chest. I had the bayonet crudely duct-taped to my silencer, jutting out in front of the muzzle. The GARMR tablet was stuffed down the back of my pants and my pack lay hidden under the corkscrew slide. The GARMR looked at me curiously as I stepped off the fort onto the shredded-tire-covered ground. Reluctantly, I left my pack and pressed toward the building with only the minimum essentials.
The cure was getting off the roof of that fucking building today.
I slowly worked my way through the thick growth, stopping just short of the Wachovia Tower’s south parking lot. The massive corpse pile had formed on the west side of the building, with only “small” ten-foot piles of writhing bodies on the south side where I was accompanied by a mob of a hundred or so.
I keyed the radio.
“Doc, Kil,” I said.
“Doc can’t come to the phone right now: He’s on vacation in Tahiti” was the response.
“Cute. Toss a line down, center south,” I said.
“Aye,” said Doc.
After a couple of minutes, a green rope fell to the corpse pile and unraveled onto the ground at the feet of the undead. They took no interest in it. There was no heat signature; it didn’t smell like meat.
“Gracias. Can you pull me up? Probably two hundred pounds with my kit,” I said.
“Yeah, we got you, fat-ass,” Doc replied as laughter echoed from the top, further taunting the hungry corpses on the ground in front of me.
Gallows humor.
I approached the GARMR, patting it on the head.
“Good boy.”
The words escaped my lips faster than I could stop them from leaving.
Using the tablet, I sent the machine to the south side, just far enough away from the horde to give it maneuverability.
I looked down at the miniature Simon replica on my wrist and wedged my index finger into the protected red button.
The GARMR’s ear-piercing klaxon blared, sending visible shock waves through the undead. The new stimulus polarized the horde in one direction, sending them grasping for Checkers. As the south-side parking lot began to clear out, I used the tablet and dragged the GARMR position a half mile west of the building, drawing the creatures away. I stuffed the tablet back down the back of my cargo pants and sprinted for the building. A hundred meters before, a creature stepped out in front and got the bayonet. My ankle began to ache a little but I wasn’t due for another dose yet, according to Mitch’s schedule.
It was a clear shot to the ten-foot corpse pile. I began to carefully climb the horrible Twister game gone mad, careful to avoid the gaping maws that seemed to flash at me every step of the way up the hill of corpses, all with head-shot wounds. My left hand had reached the rope and I quickly tied it off to my rigger’s belt.
“Ready,” I said into the radio.
The rope took slack and began to pull my pants up higher, squeezing the tablet to the small of my back. The rope tugged again, but my pant leg was snagged on something. I shook my foot back and forth, unable to release it from the snag, when I realized that a bony hand was clutching my pant leg, unwilling to let go. The rest of the corpse was buried somewhere underneath.
“Let me back down: I’m stuck!”
I pulled my blade and cut my pants, releasing the buried creature’s relentless grip on me.
“I’m good. Let’s go.”
I ascended slowly up the side of the building, using my legs to offset some of the weight as the men tugged. Halfway up the side, I again felt a grip, this time on my right leg. I kicked off with my left, swinging off the side of the building, dragging a skinny corpse with me through the air. The thing wasn’t letting go, so I had no choice but to blast it in the face with the Commando, sending echoes reverberating off the building.
I couldn’t hear the GARMR klaxon any longer. Either it was too far away or dogpiled by a thousand undead. Absent the klaxon, the loudest noise in the neighborhood was my Commando, but it was too late. The unholy new tenants of the Wachovia Tower were awake and hyperaware that something alive was nearby. My 140-decibel suppressed rifle blast made sure of that. My ears weren’t ringing, but it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. The concussion blast from the short-barreled 5.56 slapped me in the face when I was forced to make a second shot. The creature released its grip and tumbled end over end, joining the piles of face-shot bodies below.
“Oh, fuck, you went and did it,” Doc said over the radio.
I could feel the rope surge faster. I tried to use my legs to help ease their effort and was making good headway until a dozen corpses started jutting out of every broken window, grabbing for anything they could get a grip on. I was left with no choice. I kicked hard, swinging my body out, away from the building, and opened up on the creatures that threatened my safety.
Ten shots left the barrel in short order, wasting creatures, leaving their torsos hanging half out of the broken windows.
“Pull!” I screamed to the rooftops.
The rope surged upward five feet in the span of two seconds, revealing another dozen undead hands shooting out of the building to grasp warm flesh. I kicked out again but was too close to the top, my hang time cut short. I still managed to pop some instigators in the face, buying me another five-foot surge.
Breathless and shaken from gunfighting my way up the side of the building, my gloved hand finally reached the top ledge. I reached up to grab it, but a huge, powerful hand reached down and gripped my forearm. My body launched up and onto the roof as if weightless. I lay there for a moment, catching my breath, brought back to the here and now by the intense heat and distinctive jet of a flamethrower.
• • •
After catching my breath, I finally shook hands with Doc and Billy for the first time. Doc was about five foot nine, probably about two hundred and thirty pounds, built like a brick shithouse. His beard was singed, likely by the flamethrower. Billy had blond hair and appeared to be nearly a foot taller than Doc but was skinny like a college basketball player. Doc fished around in his pockets before pulling out a peeled and scratched ID card. He handed it over and I looked down at my younger, clean-shaven face. I felt a wave of nostalgia.
“Thank you,” I said, fixated on the photo.
“Don’t mention it. Now, why don’t you tell me and Billy Boy why you came all the way up here?” Doc said.
“To give you these,” I said, pulling full 5.56 mags out of my cargo pockets.
“Hot damn,” Billy said, snatching two from my hands, eagerly feeding the mag well on his M4. I heard his bolt go home with a whack and a broad smile crossed his face from ear to ear.
“You couldn’t have made it down. The rope wouldn’t hold more than one person at a time, and that’d take too long,” I said.
“Agreed,” Doc replied. “What the hell was that noise?”
“It was my dog—long story. I have a big rig a few miles from here. Let’s get our parachutes on, grab the cure, and get the hell off this building,” I said with as much authority as I could muster.
“That’s a good plan, but the coolant canister for the transport container is going to run out soon. The last spare is two floors down. First, the undead are thick down there again, thanks to your gunfire, and second, if we managed to get off the building alive, the cure would dissipate by tomorrow without another coolant canister or an electric outlet,” Doc said.
“I’ll go,” said a lab coat
from the roof access doorway. “I’m the one that knows exactly where it is.”
“You wouldn’t make it ten steps before you were torn apart,” Billy said to him.
“That may be true, but I’m dead already. Gimme the Pig. I wanna get this over with. If we don’t do this, what was the whole fucking point?”
Billy said a few words to the already-dead man he called Feel Good before strapping the flamethrower to the man’s back and cinching it down. The heavy tank on the researcher’s back was painted with the image of a large pig breathing fire. Doc and Billy asked the lab coat if he was sure, and the man nodded before lighting the pilot on the Pig and disappearing down into the stairwell.
“I’m going to the door with him. Someone’s gotta make sure it gets closed behind him,” Billy said to Doc.
Doc nodded and Billy disappeared down below after the lab coat. We spent the next few minutes listening for signs of trouble and checking our chutes. The best side to jump was going to be east, opposite the massive pile of corpses. Curious, I walked over to the west side of the building to peek over and was greeted by a grinning corpse just below the edge, its finger nearly touching the lip of the rooftop. More were making the climb and would soon reach the apex. The last working flamethrower was two floors below, and any gun fired here would speed the advance of the undead up to us.
I checked the bayonet, noticing the blistered and melted duct tape that held the knife to the can. Satisfied it would hold, I jabbed downward, killing the creature, sending it backward into the pile and constructing yet another step by which the undead would advance.
My west-side field trip was interrupted by a three-round burst of gunfire coming from inside the building. A scream echoed from the stairwell and also from the broken windows. Even more undead gathered around the building. Doc and I put on our parachutes and took defensive positions in front of the roof access opening. I dreaded unleashing the Commando again, but the jet of the flamethrower and more gunshots from below were about to make it necessary.
