Behind him, he heard Jolie’s shotgun go off, and he looked over his shoulder. The zeds from the apartment building were free now, and they streamed into the street behind them. One of them—a runner—had taken off after Jolie, and she had dropped it with a blast from the .410. She hadn’t killed it, however; the ghoul thrashed about on the ground, kicking the asphalt with its feet while flailing its hands in the air. Gartrell hadn’t seen that kind of activity before; apparently, the zeds could be knocked down for the count by a severe enough head injury.
“Jolie, run!” Gartrell shouted. “Let the gunships take care of those things!” As he spoke, he waved to the hovering Apaches and pointed at the dozen or so zeds streaming toward them. The attack helicopters did as instructed, and a moment later, 30mm rounds were slashing through the zombies. Even as they were being cut down, the ghouls never gave any indication they knew they were under attack. They only had eyes for Gartrell, Jaden, and Jolie, and they continued to pursue them even after their legs had been blown into ribbons and their torsos disemboweled by the high explosive dual purpose rounds.
As they drew nearer to the cloud of dense black smoke that blew down Second Avenue, Gartrell slowed. Jaden had stopped struggling now, and he sagged against the first sergeant’s back. Blood ran from his wrists where the plastic ties had pierced his flesh, and his struggles had only served to turn scrapes into ragged tears. Jolie stayed close behind them, and she fired her shotgun once again as a ghoul emerged from a shattered storefront—the Starbucks she and Gartrell had met in hours earlier.
“Uh, Terminator. This is Summit. Top cover says you’re getting within sixty meters of the Second Avenue engagement area, and they can’t suppress the zeds without maybe hitting you as well. What do you want to do? Over.”
Gartrell looked at the intersection ahead and gauged that the smoke just wasn’t heavy enough to adequately shield them. In fact, as he watched, several zombies strolled right through it. One of them was on fire. When they saw the humans, they hurried toward them as fast as their dead limbs could propel them. Gartrell checked behind him, and saw two other zeds were making their way up the sidewalk; an overhang prevented the Apache gunners from getting a visual on them, so they were unable to fire. One of the zombies crawled. The other hobbled.
“Jolie, shoot those things in the head once they’re within twenty feet. Shoot the walker first, then wait for the crawler.”
“All right.”
“Summit, Terminator. I want the Apaches to use rockets on Second Avenue. I want them to light up the entire intersection and give us enough cover to make it into the subway without being detected. Can they do that for us right away? Over.”
“Your call, Terminator. Stand by.”
Gartrell raised the AA-12 and went to guns on the closest zombie, blasting its skull into fragments. It sank to the street like an empty plastic bag. Behind it, the ghoul that was on fire suddenly collapsed as well; the flames had consumed so much tissue that it couldn’t walk any longer. Behind him, Jolie’s shotgun cracked once. As Gartrell waited for the rest of the zombies ahead to get closer, he pulled his pistol and thumbed off the safety. Holding it in both hands, he carefully dispatched all the oncoming zeds with perfectly-placed headshots.
Five rounds out of the pistol, two out of the shotty.
“Terminator, Summit. Party in ten seconds, top cover recommends you pull back immediately while they do their thing, over.”
Gartrell holstered his pistol and grabbed Jolie as she sighted on the zombie crawling up 86th Street. He ran back the way they had come, dragging her along behind. She squeaked as they passed the zombie crawling in the street and it reached out for her with one filthy hand. Flies buzzed around the dirty, bloodstained corpse.
“Where are we going? The subway station is back there!” Jolie said.
Her question was answered from above when a hissing roar cut through the air. Gartrell looked up to see one of the Apaches surrounded momentarily by flame and smoke as 2.75-inch rockets spat from the outboard pods slung beneath the attack helicopter’s stubby wings. The rockets flew for less than a second before they slammed into the intersection at speeds approaching 400 miles an hour. They detonated the instant the point-contact fuses at the tip of each warhead made contact with something solid, and 17 pounds of high explosives ripped at dead flesh, automotive sheet metal, asphalt, and concrete again and again. Windows shattered and the faces of every building on the block cracked and crazed as each explosion yielded a strong shock wave that ripped through the intersection. Gartrell spun around and faced the devastation, not because he wanted to see it, but because he wanted to shield Jaden from any debris which might come hurtling their way.
The attack ended after just a few seconds, and the first helicopter super-elevated, climbing away at full power as the second Apache slid into its firing position. Thirty-eight high explosive rockets had laid the intersection to waste, and Gartrell looked up to see flames leaping almost a hundred feet into the air, flames that gave off voluminous clouds of thick, black smoke. Even from more than a hundred feet away, he felt the heat of the blaze on his body. The single Apache had done more damage in its attack than the main gun of the Coast Guard cutter Escanaba had during a similar attack Gartrell had witnessed the night before.
But through the inferno, zombies still moved. They walked through the flames and the dense smoke as if the conflagration didn’t exist. Some of them were almost shredded from shrapnel and the effects of the explosions; others were blackened by the heat or actually aflame themselves. Many finally stumbled and collapsed, cooked by the fantastic heat, but others continued marching on, heading toward Gartrell and the others.
“Dave!”
Jolie’s voice was distant, far away. Gartrell turned and looked behind them. More zombies advanced up 86th Street, coming in from the east, doubtless lured in by the hovering helicopters and explosions.
And then the second Apache unleashed its salvo of rockets, and the firestorm in the intersection doubled, then trebled. The shock waves raced down the street, flattening the zeds that had managed to survive the first attack. Jaden had screamed himself hoarse by now, and Gartrell grabbed one of his hands in a vain attempt to calm him. There was just no way that was happening. Gartrell thought it would be a miracle if the poor kid would be able to calm down in several weeks. The Apache hovering in the sky behind them actually drifted backwards. Gartrell grabbed Jolie’s hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Come on, we gotta go now! That Apache, he’s lining up on the zeds coming from the east, and we need to get out of here!”
“But what about the fire?” she asked, pointing to the raging inferno that waited for them in the intersection. The heat and flames were so intense that even the zombies hadn’t survived it; they were blackened husks of sizzling, necrotic flesh lying strewn about. Those that still moved were so badly damaged that they were no longer a top threat.
Those closing in from the rear were a different story.
“Well, if we stay, we’ll be in his zone of fire, and that’s going to be a hell of a lot worse!” Gartrell indicated the Apache, which had now repositioned itself. Over the river, another attack helicopter banked in and took position above and behind the first. “Come on!”
Without waiting for her to agree, he yanked her after him and ran like hell toward the intersection. As he did, he pulled a bottle of water from one of his cargo pockets and opened it. He doused Jaden’s head with a liberal amount of liquid, then splashed the remainder on his face and BDUs and tossed the container to the gutter. He heard Jolie do the same, using one of the water bottles strapped to the side of the backpack.
At a hundred meters from the intersection, the air was noticeably hot.
At fifty meters, it was scalding, and Gartrell was happy he had splashed water all over himself and Jaden.
At twenty-five meters, the heat was almost blistering, and Gartrell found himself taking brief, shallow breaths. The smoke was thick and cloying, and visibility
was diminishing. On his back, Jaden was wracked by a coughing fit.
At ten meters from the subway entrance, Gartrell’s uniform felt like it was on fire and that his skin was burning beneath it. Something wet and hot landed on him, and he realized it was Jolie, showering her son with the contents of another bottle of water. The liquid sizzled when it hit the scorching hot pavement. The asphalt was already melting in places, and Gartrell hopped onto the concrete sidewalk as he bolted for the stairs leading into the subway station. Behind him, he heard the Apache’s chaingun open up again, barely audible above the roar of the flames. The air was toxic, and it burned Gartrell’s throat and made his eyes sting and water. The green paint on the metal barrier surrounding the stairs leading to the underground subway was melting. Jaden’s screams were lost in the unholy cacophony of hell as Gartrell made it to the stairs and stumbled down them. Halfway down, he realized it wasn’t Jaden who was screaming. It was Gartrell himself.
Below, the darkness was cooler, inviting. Gartrell plunged into it, grateful for the sudden change in temperature that seemed to be almost wintery compared to the hell above. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back as Jolie staggered down the steps. She had lost the shotgun, and her hair was smoldering. She coughed and retched, almost doubled over. Her footing was unsure, and she slowed as she entered the darkness, gasping for breath.
And then Jaden screamed. Gartrell sensed movement in the blackness behind him, and he cursed himself for forgetting where he was, what he was doing, what the real threat was. He snapped his night vision goggles down over his eyes and turned, his right hand already closing around the AA-12’s pistol-grip, his index finger sliding onto the trigger. The NVGs exited their standby mode and powered up, and what had been pure, unbroken blackness to his unaided vision came alive in ghostly green hues.
To the zombies, Gartrell and Jaden were presented as silhouettes against the light filtering down the stairway from above, and they launched themselves forward like cheetahs sprinting after their prey. The first was so close to Gartrell that it almost grabbed him before the first blast from the AA-12 blew it back, ripping through its chest and decimating a cardiopulmonary system it no longer needed. His second shot beheaded it, and he did the same to the next four ghouls as they surged toward him. It was over within seconds, and Gartrell crept over the now-motionless corpses and approached the trio of turnstiles and a larger exit designed for use by the disabled. He started to reach for the latter’s push-bar release, but then he noticed the alarm system on the door; he had no doubt it was battery-powered, and the last thing he wanted was for an alarm to start shrieking in the darkness.
Well, not that the gunshots probably went unnoticed…
He stepped back from the door and reached into one of the pockets on his body armor. He found an infrared chemlight and bent it in the center. It made a snapping sound, and through the NVGs, it was as if someone had just turned on a floodlight. Gartrell hurled the inch-and-a-half device into the subway tunnel. The additional illumination made the NVGs even more effective, as they could read into the lower levels of the infrared bandwidth. The tunnel seemed clear, but a scuffling sound caught his attention, and he looked to his right, to the north. Zeds leapt off the opposing platform and shuffled across the southbound tunnel, attracted by the brief, one-sided firefight. They stumbled about in the darkness, and without the light pouring from the stairwell behind him, they were completely blind.
“Dave.” Jolie coughed and spat. Gartrell turned to her, and she pointed up the stairway with her revolver, which she held in both hands. “They’re coming.” A trail of blood ran down one side of her face, and he figured something had sliced open her scalp, probably a piece of shrapnel. He moved grabbed her arm without even bothering to raise his NVGs and glance upward. He knew the zeds would follow them down, despite the raging inferno that blazed away over their heads.
“Zombies in the tunnel, but they can’t see us. Stay quiet, and let me lead you. We have to hop over some turnstiles, and then we’re going to walk up the platform to the right. You understand me?”
“Yes. Jaden’s so scared—”
“So am I. Do as I tell you. You go first, then turn and help me and Jaden across.” He led her to the turnstiles and helped her climb over one. She was unsteady, and her movements were furtive, unsure. He wanted to yell at her, but he didn’t dare, not with the zeds so close. They were already zeroing in on their position, and their moans echoed in the empty subway tunnel. Jolie looked about wildly, but in the inky blackness she could see nothing. Gartrell slapped her shoulder as he heaved himself over the turnstile, and she grabbed his arm and helped him across. It was tough going, especially while carrying all manner of weapons and with a forty-pound kid strapped to his back, but Gartrell made it.
And just in time, for the first of the ghouls made it to their platform and hoisted itself onto it. A single shot from Gartrell’s AA-12 sent its headless body flying back onto the northbound tracks. That only served to attract the rest of the zeds in the tunnel, and they rushed toward their position. Gartrell grabbed Jolie’s arm and pulled her after him, hurrying down the platform. As he did, he spoke quietly into his headset’s boom microphone.
“Summit Six, Terminator. We’re in the tunnel—we made it. Hats off to the aviators, they got us through, over.”
The response from the 2/87th’s commander was broken up by static, and Gartrell had to concentrate to make out the words. “Terminator, Summit. Your transmission is breaking up, we can barely get you. Confirm you’re in the tunnels, over.”
“Summit, Terminator is in the tunnel, over.”
The response was awash with static and an oscillating tone. They were already too far underground for the radio to work properly. Jaden moaned, and the ghouls behind the group caught the sound and stumbled after them. One of stenches fell right off the edge of the platform and slammed onto the tracks with enough force to break bones, but it struggled back to its feet and continued on, dragging one leg behind it. Gartrell led Jolie to the end of the platform, where a small gate bearing a DO NOT ENTER sign blocked off a maintenance ladder. He brought Jolie to a halt and pushed her against the wall.
“Stand right there. I’m going to have to thin out the herd a bit,” he said.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Don’t worry. I can. We’re good, we’ve got about”—he looked over his shoulder at the oncoming zombies—“six or seven stenches to deal with, then we’re going to go down a ladder and head up the tunnel. Stay cool, Jolie. We’re getting through this.”
“Trying,” she said. But the expression on her face said it all. She was already past her limit, and the only thing that kept her running was force of will and the love for her son.
“Stay right here,” Gartrell told her. He did a quick visual reconnoiter of the area, and saw no zeds in the area other than those to their south. He stepped away from Jolie and walked back the way they came; this way, when the zeds keyed in on the AA-12’s muzzle flashes, they wouldn’t threaten Jolie directly.
Just me and poor little Jaden. That’s the ticket, Gartrell—put a four-year-old in harm’s way.
The zombies groped their way down the platform, moaning, hissing, their dead eyes rolling in their dry sockets as they struggled to separate shapes from the blanket of darkness that enshrouded them. Overhead, Gartrell heard the rotor beats of the Apaches fading into the distance. Their job done, the attack helicopters were retreating, probably to rearm, refuel, and repeat their attacks elsewhere.
He waited for the zeds to close on his position. Before he opened up, he checked over his shoulder to make sure Jolie was still secure; she was. He raised the AA-12 to his shoulder, sighted on the closest zed, and fired. It collapsed to the platform twenty feet from him. Jaden screamed at the sudden sound and struggled mightily, and his movements were so severe this time that Gartrell’s second shot missed the next zed entirely. That gave it enough time to charge forward with a surprising burst of speed, and Ga
rtrell dropped it when it was only four feet away. The rest of the stenches roared and hurried toward him as if of one, hands outstretched, jaws spread wide. It took all of Gartrell’s discipline not to mash the AA-12’s trigger down and rock and roll on full auto as he backpedaled, Jaden’s screams in his ears as he fired again and again and again. Spent 12 gauge shotgun shells flew out of the weapon’s ejector port and rolled across the platform floor as Gartrell faded back, leaving a trail of still corpses in his wake. When he was done, he had laid waste to seven zeds.
Across the tracks, more commotion from the other platform. And back at the turnstiles, a few more zeds that had survived the inferno overhead managed to make it to the platform. Gartrell counted at least twenty, maybe thirty zombies had entered the tunnel. He ejected the AA-12’s ammunition drum, and found he had only three rounds left. He suppressed a curse and reached into his knapsack. He pulled out the other drum and extracted the three shotgun shells from it, then hurled it southbound as far as he was able. The drum bounced down the tracks, and the zombies turned toward the sound, peering into the darkness. Gartrell loaded the three shells into his remaining drum, then slapped it back into the AA-12. He now had a total of seven rounds left, and then the AA-12 would be useless.
Jaden moved on his back and whined loudly, doubtless from the pain emanating from his bleeding wrists. Gartrell winced at the sound as the stenches turned back in their direction. They started moving immediately, casting about in the darkness for the prey they knew was there. Gartrell fell back to Jolie and touched her wrist. She started and brought up her revolver.
“It’s me,” Gartrell whispered. “We’re leaving. Right now.” He grabbed her wrist and led her to the maintenance gate. It was unlocked, so he pushed it open. Below was a short ladder, only three or four rungs which led to the tunnel’s surface. No stenches were in the immediate vicinity, so he brought his lips close to Jolie’s ear. She stank of sweat, grime, and singed hair.
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