by JJ Zep
“Ready!” Garner shouted, as the Z’s surged forward. “Fire!”
The first burst of gunfire cut a swathe across their ranks, but Alex could see immediately that it wasn’t going to be enough. There were too many of them, spread across too broad a front. And God, they were fast. The only Z’s she’d ever seen move this quickly were hopped up on SH-1. They poured up the ramp, the front-runners torn apart by the fifties but coming still, a monstrous horde of creatures, hungry, fast and hyper-aggressive.
twenty two
“I’m going after him,” Ruby said.
“Whoa, back up a second kid. We don’t even know where they’ve taken him. Besides, you go charging in, waving that sword of yours around and you’re only going to get yourself killed or captured.”
“I don’t care,” Ruby said, jutting out her jaw in that familiar show of Collins’ defiance. “They took my father and I’m getting him back.”
“Of course you are,” Joe said. “But let’s stop and think about this a minute, let’s come up with a plan.” He looked back at Ruby, standing there with her nostrils flared, her face intense, a look of controlled rage in her dark eyes. “You trust your Uncle Joe, don’t you?”
Ruby nodded, reluctantly at first, then with vigor. The tension seemed to ebb out of her body. “I trust you,” she said.
“Well, thanks for that overwhelming show of belief,” Joe said, favoring her with a grin and getting the semblance of a smile in return. “Now tell me everything that Eddy told you.”
“Not much,” Ruby said. “Just that one of the Humvees stopped and picked my dad up. That he was pretty badly beat up, but not bitten far as Eddy could see. That the guy who was shouting the orders was a big, black guy. Huge, Eddy said, a full bird colonel. Oh, and he referred to my dad by name. He called him Collins.”
Joe contemplated that for a moment. Not much, as Ruby had said, but enough for him to form a number of opinions. Firstly, the identity of the Colonel Ruby had described. That had to be Bobo Benson. Joe knew him from his days at Pendleton, when Benson had been a major. Even then he’d been top drawer. If the Corporation had sent him in to handle this, they were serious about taking Manhattan. The next thing to consider was why Benson had bothered picking up Chris at all? Why not just shoot him on the spot as he had the other poor bastards lying in the snow out there? When he considered that Benson had referred to Chris by name, the answer was obvious. There was still a warrant out, going back to General Pike’s days. Is that what this was about, shipping him and Chris back to Pendleton for one of their infamous show trials?
“Uncle Joe?”
Ruby’s voice brought him back to the present. “Sorry Rube, just trying to make some sense of what you told me, that’s all.”
“And?” Ruby said impatiently.
“Well,” Joe said, choosing his words carefully. Ruby had her hackles up and might just do something impulsive if he gave her a reason to. “The good news is, I don’t believe they’re going to hurt him. Otherwise they’d have shot him right here, rather than take him with them.”
Ruby nodded. “And the bad news?”
“The bad news, is that we don’t know where they’ve taken him.”
“Exactly why I should get looking.”
“No need for that kiddo.”
“How so?”
“We’ve got Hooley. Come on, we need to get back to the apartment.”
twenty three
Bobo Benson had taken two calls on the radio in the space of as many minutes. Neither of them had improved his mood. The first was from Avery Grant, the soon-to-be governor of New York.
“Colonel, what the hell’s going on down there?” Grant demanded.
“Nothing untoward, sir,” Benson said. “Everything’s on track and running as planned.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Grant spat back. “According to my intel, you’ve got a breach at the Lincoln Tunnel that’s running out of control. Want to tell me what you’re doing about that?”
Benson paused for a moment, the handset in his hand. How would Grant, waiting at the old airfield in White Plains, know about the breach? Someone on his team was talking. He thought he knew who that someone was. He depressed the button on the handset.
“I assure you, director, that everything is under control. We have the city locked down. I’m preparing to move to phase two as we speak.”
“Well, you goddamn better have,” Grant snapped. “Because I’m heading down there in the next couple of hours, and when I arrive, I don’t expect to have my ass chewed by some Z.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir,” Benson said, immediately. “According to the mission plan, I still have 48 hours to tie things up around here. I would strongly advise that you sit tight until I give the all clear.”
“Oh, you’d strongly advise, would you?” Grant’s voice crackled back down the line. “You seem to be getting a bit above your station there, Colonel. You think I’m going hang out here in the boondocks while you fuck up my city! I’ll be there this evening soldier, and I expect to find everything locked down and tied up, just like you were instructed to do. I put my chopper on the deck and see Z’s running loose on the streets and you can kiss that general’s star goodbye. Do I make myself clear? This shit would never have happened on General Pike’s watch.”
Benson was about to protest when the line went dead. “Great,” he said. “Just fucking great! On top of all the other shit going on, I now have to be tripping over this asshole.” And Avery Grant was indeed an asshole, of the worst possible kind - a civilian who liked to stick his oar in on military matters. Benson was tempted to radio back and command Grant to stay put until things were secured in Manhattan. After all, he was the ranking officer until the handover to the civilian authority. The thing was, Grant was an influential member of the promotions panel. Piss him off and Bobo could kiss that coveted star goodbye. No, he was going to have to suck this up, let Grant drift into town and play the big man.
The radio crackled into life. “Team leader, this is Garner. Over.”
Benson lifted the handset in his huge fist, depressed the button and brought it to his mouth. “Speak,” he said.
“Sir, we’ve got a problem down here,” Garner said. Even over the crackly line Benson could hear the panic in his voice.
“What’s the problem?” Benson said. “Give those Z’s a blast of static, march them off to join the others, then have that breach in the wall repaired and get back down here. We’ve got work to do.”
“Sir, I don’t think you understand,” Garner started, before he was cut off.
“Garner!” Benson barked into the handset. “Garner, come in.”
The radio remained defiantly silent.
twenty four
The intersection of 106th and Columbus loomed up ahead. Ruby stood concealed in shadow, peering around the corner to the sunny thoroughfare beyond. About half a block back, Joe shuttled along, blowing heavily and reminding himself for the umpteenth time that he was, ‘too old for this shit.’ He was about to express the sentiment out loud, when Ruby turned and stilled him with a finger to her lips. She pointed to the second floor of the building over the road. At first, Joe wasn’t sure what she wanted him to see. Then he picked it out. A window stood ajar up there, the glass giving him a reflection along the expanse of Columbus Avenue, to the frontage of their apartment building. A Humvee stood at the curb, a few soldiers huddled on the sidewalk beside it.
“Shit!” Joe hissed under his breath.
“We can take them, can’t we?” Ruby said.
Joe thought about that for a moment. The entrance to the building was halfway down the block, and with no cover to either side. There was no way they were going to be able to sneak up on the soldiers. They’d be outgunned and outnumbered. They could, of course, circle round back, but if the soldiers were covering the entrance, chances were they’d have men there too. Which left bluffing their way in, and he thought he might just have an idea on how to….
“Movement down there,” Ruby said.
Joe looked at the reflection and saw the soldiers scrambling towards their vehicle. In the next moment the powerful diesel engine roared into life and the Humvee pulled away from the curb, did a wide turn in the road and headed south, moving at speed.
“Looks like we’re in luck,” Joe said.
But by the time they reached the apartment building he’d changed his tune. When he’d left the building some four hours earlier he’d ridden the elevator down from sixteen. Since then it seemed the power had been cut. No matter how many times he stabbed at the button on the elevator, it refused to budge.
“Come on,” Ruby said, already headed for the stairway.
“Could this day get any funner?” Joe said hobbling after her.
twenty five
Alex looked frantically across the horde. Whatever Marin’s plan had been with this, it was backfiring badly. The fifties were cutting a swathe of destruction, decimating the zombies, tearing them apart. A third Humvee had now joined the fray, sent from uptown. This one wasn’t equipped with a cannon, but the soldiers had scrambled out and taken up sniping positions, easily picking off any Z’s that somehow managed to evade the fifties. Alex herself had drawn her sidearm and had picked off a couple of the creatures. Purely out of self-preservation, of course. She knew where she stood in this argument. Still, it was an argument Marin wasn’t going to win. Not unless she did something about it.
She looked down the ramp, towards the enclosing wall, pockmarked by gunfire, collapsed in places, the Z’s still oozing through. She hoped like hell that Marin had managed to get back into the tunnel before the gunners had opened fire. If he hadn’t, he was likely lying at the bottom of that pile of mutilated zombie flesh. And that would make what she was about to do a treasonable offence, one that would put her in front of a firing squad.
For a moment she wavered, not certain if she could go through with it. Marin could be an oddball at times, but she loved him, she knew that much, loved him for his brilliance and his vision, for his willingness to take risks. His research tied in exactly with her own beliefs. She believed, as he did, that the zombies should be studied, not destroyed. If the narrow-minded halfwits at the Corporation didn’t see that, then it was up to people of vision, people like her and Marin Scolfield, to take the initiative.
She looked down at the 9-millimeter pistol in her hand, looked up at Captain Garner, standing just feet in front of her, directing fire, shouting commands to his men. Without really thinking about it, she raised the 9-mil in an arc and pulled the trigger. Garner’s legs suddenly buckled under him and he slumped to the ground, dead before he hit the pavement. Even as he fell, Alex was swinging the pistol to her left. The Humvee gunner was focused only on the Z’s in front of him, working his weapon on its mount, swinging it in a deadly arc. Alex waited until he shifted the gun to the right. Then she fired three shots. She saw red blossom on the side of the gunner’s head, just above the ear. He slumped forward, the fifty veering dangerously left, getting off a final burst before it fell silent. She was committed now, in it to the elbows, as her father used to say. The soldiers, as yet, hadn’t picked up that one of the fifties had stopped firing, but they soon would. She had to move fast.
“Stay calm,” she told herself as she rounded the Humvee, crossing the tarmac in long strides, not running, the 9-mil held at her side. The second Humvee was perhaps thirty feet away, its gunner standing in the hatch, the fifty kicking back as he worked it with deadly efficiency. In her peripheral vision to the left, Alex could see the Z’s streaming towards her on the side where the fifty was no longer keeping them at bay. The gunner at the remaining cannon seemed to notice that too now. He turned to the left, his eyes widening as he realized that his colleague was down. Alex was ten feet away when he directed his gaze at her. She raised the pistol and shot him in the face. Then she walked towards the Humvee, levered the door open and slipped inside.
The driver turned as she pulled the door shut, his mouth starting to form words that he never got out as Alex pumped a bullet into the side of his head. She slid into the passenger seat and looked through the windshield down the ramp. Without the fifties to back them up, the soldiers were being routed. She saw one of them dragged down and ripped apart right in front of her, others dropping their weapons and trying to retreat up the ramp, not all of them making it. For a moment she felt something approximating regret for what she’d done, but that was soon banished. Marin Scolfield stepped from the dark maw of the tunnel and started up the ramp. Alex looked across the hellish vista before her and her thin lips slowly formed into a smile.
twenty six
The 16th floor wasn’t marked on any blueprint of the building. It was a maintenance floor, accessible only via the service elevator and by a hidden door in the fire escape between floors 15 and 17. Joe had discovered it quite by accident and had thought it would make an ideal hideout, should the need arise. To that extent, he and Hooley had spent weeks stocking the place with food, water, ammunition, fuel, camp beds and other supplies. Now Joe stood at the door, concealed from casual observation behind a maintenance station. “Hooley!” he hissed, banging the flat of his palm against the door, fearful of making any more noise than he had to. For all he knew there were soldiers still in the building.
“Hooley!” he shouted, louder now, anxious that maybe Hooley and the others had been captured after all. He banged on the door, using his balled fist. “Hooley! Open the goddamn door!”
He heard running footsteps from within, and a scream, a woman’s voice.
Joe took a step back, swung the AK up and aimed it at the lock. He was just about to fire when the door swung open and an ashen-faced Hooley stood before him.
“What the hell took you so long?” Joe snapped, the last part of the sentence cut off by another scream, the blood-curdling cry of someone in pain. It was then that Joe noticed the blood on Hooley’s shirtfront, the blood-soaked towel he held in his hand.
“It’s Kelly,” Hooley said.
twenty seven
Scolfield wasn’t sure what had happened but he was grateful nonetheless that the fifties had stopped firing. For a moment there, he’d thought that he might have overstepped the mark, taken too much of a risk. Now though, as he looked up the ramp, he saw that he’d been victorious. The Humvees still stood where they’d been before, but the gunners were slumped over in their firing hatches. As for the soldiers, they’d either fled or been overwhelmed by the Z’s. That told him he had to move fast, any soldiers who’d survived would be hightailing it back to HQ right now. They’d be back with reinforcements.
He stepped into the midst of the Z’s, both dead and living. Or rather, both dead and undead, he chuckled to himself. The sun out here felt incredibly bright after the gloom of the tunnel and he shaded his eyes against the glare. The Z’s were still streaming up the ramp. He made no effort to control them, other than via the I-Pod clutched in his hand. He thumbed the dial to the track he’d designated “SHIELD.” That kept them away from him for a circumference of about ten feet, which suited him just fine. Other than that they were free to do what they wanted and go where they pleased. Scolfield didn’t care much about this small band of a few hundred Z’s. His army lay further afield, conveniently gathered together for him by the Corporation.
He started winding his way up the ramp, stepping between the mutilated Z corpses. The guns had taken a heavy toll on the creatures, but nothing Bobo had in his arsenal was going to be able to withstand Scolfield’s next onslaught.
He noticed movement in one of the Humvees, the gunner stirring in the firing hatch, being shifted aside, another figure appearing in his stead. Scolfield felt a rush of panic. He was caught in the open, too far from the tunnel, not enough time to direct his Z’s at the Humvee. He froze, shut his eyes, expecting the gunner to open up at any time.
“Marin!”
For the briefest of moments, Scolfield was confused. Then the timbre of the voice
calling his name registered, that underlying grittiness that he so despised. It was Dr. Payne. Alex, he corrected himself, one’s make-believe lover ought to be addressed by her first name. Suddenly, it all made sense, the sudden turn in the tide of battle, the gunners slumped over their weapons. Alex had come through for him.
“Alex!” he called back to her, silently applauding himself for picking such a wicked and clueless accomplice.
twenty eight
Joe crossed the bare concrete floor of the storeroom at a jog, to where Kelly lay on the mattress, a frail replica of the vivacious woman he knew. Janet sat beside her on the bed, mopping at her brow while Ana kneeled beside a bucket and kept the supply of damp cloths coming. There was blood on the bed sheets, a wad of bloodstained towels, a bucket of water tinged pink. Joe had seen his fair share of battlefield wounds to be almost immune to the stuff, but this alarmed him. Christ, could someone lose that much blood and still survive?
He dropped into a crouch beside Kelly, held her hand, took the cloth from Janet and mopped at Kelly’s brow. Even through the wet rag, he could feel the heat coming off her. Kelly looked incredibly pale, her skin carrying a pasty, jaundiced hue, her chest rising and falling in barely perceptible breaths. “How is she?” Joe said, looking at Janet, realizing as he did, the stupidity of the question. Janet looked back at him, her eyes red and puffy with crying. She bit her lip, said nothing.
“I think it’s a breach,” Ana said. “And if it is, she’s going to need a doctor.”
Joe took Ana’s hand and gave it a squeeze. He looked down at the woman lying on the bed, face pinched in pain. What Ana said was true, of course. Kelly did need a doctor, probably wasn’t going to make it without one. Except, where was he going to find a doctor in this mess? There were a number in Manhattan, but they could be holed up anywhere right now. If they were still alive that is. The only other doctor he knew of was Gerry Stefani, Dave Bamber’s M.O. But Stefani had gone with the troops to Staten Island. Who knew if he’d made it back? The idea of the military doctor though, surfaced another idea, one that just might work. No, dammit! It would work, would definitely work.
