The Valley of Shadows - eARC

by John Ringo

  As a combination of anger and confusion battled inside him, Tradittore could hear Tony and the other Cosa Nova man starting to babble in the background.

  “No man, no need to point that here. Chill man, it’s all…”

  Modern radios and cell phones automatically dampen very loud sounds to protect both the handset and the listener, so what Joey heard wasn’t deafening. However, the unmistakable sound of guns firing next to the radio cut off every other sound for several seconds. Ironically, the new technology and software filters were good enough so that as soon as the shots stopped he could hear the brassy tinkle of a few spent cases rattling on the concrete for a few moments.

  Then the channel went dead.

  The cigar snapped in Tradittore’s hand.

  * * *

  “The guardsmen say that they have radio contact with higher,” Durante yelled. “And maybe a ride out!”

  Tom couldn’t really call the zombie battle a firefight when only one side had guns, but it was as potentially lethal as any fight he had ever experienced. Although his entire party had been vaccinated, the number of zombies was sufficient to physically tear his group apart. The dark treeline had continued to vomit out groups of infected that charged the fans, who seemed insanely, or perhaps stonedly, relaxed about the rush of zombie cannibals. As a result, there were a few who had been brought down and lethally mauled, despite the accurate shotgun and pistol fire.

  Voltaire continued to wail into his microphone and play lead guitar, the sound of which seemed to attract the infected towards the main mosh pit area and away from the bank group.

  Small mercies.

  During a magazine change, he had heard gunfire with a slightly different timbre and looked over his shoulder to where Faith and Durante continued to anchor the right side of group. Across the open area, nearly on the other side of the concert, three guardsmen in heavy ponchos, gloves and MOPP gear had been laying rifle fire into the increasingly heavy infected pressure when they were swarmed. Sophia, Durante and Faith had automatically begun supporting them and Smith’s group thinned out the infected enough for the Army detachment to shake off the remaining infected.

  Tom leaned over to his brother, who was in mid magazine change, and pointed out the biggest of the three soldiers. The man had let his rifle hang on its sling and was still chopping at infected with a distinctively shaped oversize knife the size of his forearm.

  “Faith is going to want her kukri back now, sure as a gun.”

  Steve glanced over and then back towards the threat axis, keeping his pistol at the low ready.

  “No bet,” Steve said. “And I’ll give it to her, New York City police regulations be damned. Down to two mags, by the way. We need to do a flit.”

  “We need our wheels, if they’re still there,” Tom replied. “If not, I’ll talk to the Army about a ride. The cell network is down but maybe they have radios we can use.”

  They were mostly clear of the immediate scrum, as zombies continued to head for the stage. Over his shoulder, he could see the guitarist swing his guitar, the white instrument liberally blotched red. He glanced ahead, across 66th. The road was clear in both directions and well lit. Good conditions to perform an extract.

  “Let’s get this cluster organized and moving. At least we still have lights.”

  As if on cue, the entire city went dark.

  * * *

  Paul was alternately monitoring the active radio channels that he could find, and repenting for all his sins, both imaginary and realized. His greatest fear was that if they lost the Smith party entirely, it would be up to him to complete the evacuation from Manhattan.

  Now that would be a nightmare.

  It could always be worse. At least he wasn’t managing any of the trio of borderline sociopathic cartel “partners” that Smith had climbed into bed with.

  “SOC, Post Two,” one of the radios crackled. “Need the watch commander, ASAP.”

  Smith had recognized that a plurality of his security and intelligence staff already had either military or law enforcement experience, so it was simpler to retain the communication brevity codes that most already knew and have the rest learn it rather than to create another protocol that would be entirely new to all. Paul was one of those who had learned from scratch and he still felt awkward referring to himself in the third person on the radio.

  “This is SOC Actual, go.” Paul simultaneously acknowledged the call and communicated that he was the actual SOC lead, not just the shift manager.

  “SOC, we have a big city SUV at the Water Street chicane. Driver states that he’s carrying a Ms. Kohn, the director of OEM. Driver further states that Sierra Actual has cleared the visit. Request instructions, over.”

  Rune’s brain didn’t actually stutter, but he felt like it did. He reviewed the bidding. Kohn had a deal with Smith that hinged on getting a ride out should it all come a cropper. Which appeared to be happening. However, it wasn’t a carte blanche deal. Rune knew that the stated limit was up to three primaries and two “plus ones” per.

  “Two, SOC Actual. How many souls?”

  “This is Two. I count eight.” The post clearly anticipated the question.

  “Copy.” Joy, joy, joy, at least eight more pax to move by helo. “Tell the driver that they will be allowed through, then searched for weapons, and then passed into the parking area, to be accommodated until Sierra Actual returns. No information on his position is to be shared, and they don’t talk to anyone but our staff. Clear?”

  “Crystal, over.”

  “Right, I’ll be down in five and meet them in the garage.”

  When they buttoned up the building, the SOP was to have all staff in response equipment, so Paul had somewhere to put the radio. By the time he reached the garage, Joanna and her group were in a small briefing area. They wore blue Bank of the Americas’ visitor badges emblazoned with the legend “Escort Required.”

  Although Kohn was as cool as Paul had ever seen her, some of her group were visibly unsettled.

  What Paul wanted to say was “Ah, Joanna! What news on the Rialto?” but somehow he doubted she would appreciate the classics at the moment.

  “Ms. Kohn, a pleasure to see you,” he said, instead. “We are, unfortunately, in the middle of an operation and Mr. Smith is unavailable. However, if you wish to wait, we’ll be happy to accommodate you here until his return.”

  Joanna, clearly tired but unrumpled and erect, smiled back warmly.

  “Hello Paul!” Her eyes didn’t crinkle as authentically as another might have done, but it was a credible performance. “We will be happy to wait. But if you would not mind, I have some information that you might appreciate having right away. There is a specific reason we are here. Now. Perhaps we could talk separately?”

  Paul bowed slightly as he gestured to the door, but he was confident that he wasn’t going to like what came next.

  * * *

  A uniformed patrol cop was in a maintenance access space that ran adjacent to the eastbound roadway of the Holland Tunnel. Another group was on the westbound side. The dingy illumination of the battery operated emergency lights sufficed to guide his efforts with a nail gun, pinning green canvas satchels to the concrete wall. There were two more cops with him, one holding a sleeve of hardened nails to reload the gun, and another festooned with three additional satchels.

  An older detective whose suit jacket was missing, revealing a bloodstained white business shirt and a custom shoulder rig, spoke up. He sniffed the mixture of car exhaust and musty sewer smell that permeated the tunnel.

  “Damn, this place smells like ass,” he said, sniffing. “You gotta wonder why the Feds had a few tons of explosives in Manhattan.”

  “Don’t much care,” his partner with the nail reloads replied. “What I am thinking is that we ain’t gonna drop no tunnel with no measly eighty pounds of C4.”

  The uniformed cop on the ladder finished anchoring the first bundle and reached for the next one.

  “No sh
it,” he replied. “I didn’t do eight years in EOD to have some detective state the obvious.”

  “Fuck you, uni, and fuck your Marine Corps. What’s the point, then?”

  The nail gun chunked rhythmically, adding a second M183 charge to the first.

  “Ding has a plan, asshole,” said the uni, his balance wobbly as he grabbed the next bundle. “We don’t need to blow the tunnel. These things are proof against anything but a nuke, anyway. All we got to do is break up the roadbed a bit, make cars slow down to almost nothing. Meanwhile, the other guys are gonna blow the four ventilation towers, each side of the river. Anyone comes down here and spends more than ten minutes is gonna pass out, see? A little obstruction and Bridges and Tunnels, including that murderous asshole Matricardi, come to a halt and choke out on their own fucking exhaust. Ding has some other guys rigging the Expressway the same, and some more working the Washington. After we finish here, we head north to the Lincoln. Them as make it in before we call the shot are stuck on the island, with us. We trap all the right rats in the all the right places. Poetry justice.”

  It was dark enough that his face was in shadow. The other two echoed the grim smile that they could hear, if not see.

  The cop at the foot of the stepladder passed a third haversack up.

  “Poetic, Joey,” he corrected. “You mean that it’s poetic justice.”

  “But poetic justice would be turning all of them, and their kids, into infected,” the first cop pointed out.

  “We’ll get around to that.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “This feels unfortunately familiar,” Copley heard one of the civilians say.

  Riding in the back of an overfull MRAP, lurching along in a surprisingly rough ride, was a lot like being in the ’Stan.

  Copley was trying to get his head around what had just happened. A full-blown firefight in New York City’s Central Park wasn’t what his team expected at the start of their afternoon “presence” patrol near the midtown Apple store.

  Thank god that rules of engagement had changed. The MRAP gunner who had used the 240 to fire up a large group of zombies during the extraction of their small group had also passed along the change in ROE. When Copley asked for details, the gunner had waggled the machine gun towards the zombies and bits of zombies spread across Fifth Avenue and looked simultaneously annoyed and preoccupied.

  Usually they had a ten-page binder of when and under exactly what circumstances they could use specific levels of force. “Redeployment for active clearance” appeared to mean “see zombies, shoot same.”

  God, he hoped that’s what it meant, otherwise his ass was going to be in a sling. ’Cause they’d shot a lot of zombies.

  Copley’s team of three and the contractors that they fell in with at the concert fracas amassed more than a hundred kills in the first hour of heavy contact. No one seemed too worked up about it, not even the hyperactive, hyperviolent teenage girl who was bumping into her fellow passengers as she wiped down a weird-looking Kalashnikov.

  She turned to the hulking brute sitting next to Copley. His plate carrier and oversize BERT patch was liberally splashed with blood.

  “See, Gravy, this is why I like shotguns. Love, love, love shotguns. Shoot a zombie, they fall down go boom, easy-peasy.”

  The big guy was leaning against the bulkhead, chimped down and relaxed. He just grunted and, noticing that Copley was looking, raised an eyebrow.

  Copley nodded and returned to ruminating on the ROE.

  “Redeployment for active clearance” sounded pretty neat. Strong, and in control.

  Riiight.

  Copley knew what the change in ROE really meant. The reserve two-star running the National Guard operations in the five boroughs had decided that he was done losing teams, and nonlethal was not going to cut it. In other words, the general finally accepted what even his juniormost soldier had known for a week: it was time and past time to just plain kill zombies.

  Fuck Tasers.

  U.S. Northern Command, NORTHCOM, was supposed to be coordinating with NYPD and DHS. Copley figured that in the beginning it may have even worked that way. He suspected, hell, he knew in his heart, that after the concert everything had changed. For starters, his chain of command was notably absent. Nobody was getting anyone above a sergeant on the radio. And a bunch of callsigns simply weren’t answering. Either they weren’t there anymore, the zombies got them, or it was every man for himself.

  He fought down his fear—not for himself but for his little team and for his family. If it was this bad here, how about Reenie and the kids out west? If the trains stopped running, how was anyone getting back? Who the fuck was in charge?

  He looked over at Randall, who was carefully cleaning the blood from his kukri. Despite the ribbing he had given Randall, he was ready to eat a little crow and get one for himself. It seemed to do a good job on grabby zombies, of which there was an overabundance.

  Covertly taking a deep breath, the guardsman focused on trying to make something out of the hash of intermittent radio traffic emanating from the speaker.

  * * *

  Overall, the MRAP ride from the concert wasn’t too bad. The last team to be collected had to ride on the outside of the hull until they joined up with a second vehicle. Then they squeezed a few more inside under armor. Copley was glad that their unit was using the later MRAPs. These had three axles, more armor and interior room for fifteen, if you tore out the litter racks and didn’t mind painful overcrowding.

  Copley had spent most of the ride continuing his effort to reach higher in his chain of command. The tactical radio net was the only functioning communications that anyone seemed to have, except for the really short-range Fox Mike handhelds used by a couple contractors. A few seats down, he could hear the contractor team lead trying to use his own radio. Inside the big city, their useful range was only a few blocks.

  Apart from increasingly fragmented directions to the armored vehicles that were trying to collect teams, there were no coherent orders. “Their” Forward Operating Base, located inside John Jay Park on the East Side was off the air. The MRAP that they were in was from an entirely different unit.

  The patrol sergeant was feeling lost. Looking at some of the faces inside the dimly lit interior, he saw he wasn’t the only one. The civilian woman they pulled from the concert was quietly sobbing into her hands.

  The vehicles paused to drop off most of the passengers at another FOB, this one farther south. Looking around Madison Square Park, Copley saw only a few uniforms. Two other vehicles were in view, and a pool of yellow light illuminated soldiers frantically turning wrenches on the power pack of one MRAP. He motioned to his two troops to stay put. A few contractors hopped out and huddled, while others maintained an alert posture, weapons out.

  “Find fuel for the MRAP,” Copley said, addressing Randall. “I’m going to go talk to the bank people and the truck commander. Take care of Astro. Drink, eat…”

  “Take Motrin,” Randall finished. “And change your fucking socks.”

  “Just take care of Astroga,” Copley said, looking around and shaking his head. “What the fucking fuck?”

  * * *

  Inside the TOC, the roar of the generators was muted. There were rows of folding tables and chairs, some green-painted field desks and several open notebook PCs. However, the TOC, if that’s what it was, was severely understaffed.

  A private had his feet up on the table and appeared preoccupied with a paperback book. At the other end of the work space, a paunchy captain doodled on a clipboard. The radio blared briefly and Copley watched as the captain busily logged the radio calls.

  In a zombie apocalypse.

  The guard sergeant walked up and saluted, reporting in with a party of three, but the captain, whose name tape read Flamenco, held up one hand as he transcribed a radio transmission that was mostly static and screams.

  * * *

  “So, where do we get fuel for the MRAP?” Private Astroga asked.

 
; “In a situation like this?” Randall said. “Grab anything that’s not nailed down.”

  “So…we loot the Humvee?” the private said.

  “What Humvee?” Randall answered, looking around.

  The vehicle in question was an uparmored version of the HMMWV, called a M1114. It was making its way through the serpentine roadway in a random fashion. It would nearly hit one of the concrete barricades, then swerve at the last moment, stop, jerkily back up, move forward, stop, turn…

  “I think the driver’s drunk, anyway,” Astroga said. “We probably should drain the tank for his own safety.”

  The reinforced vehicle made the last turn, accelerated dangerously in the narrow space leading towards the headquarters and then stopped abruptly. An Army officer stepped out in Class As, a much fancier uniform than their own stained and bloody ACUs. The ribbon rack hung slightly askew and the coat was misbuttoned. The officer made a sincere effort to neatly adjust his uniform while carefully inspecting his surroundings. He carefully avoided making eye contact with the two dumbfounded enlisted personnel.

  “Holy fuck,” Randall whispered, spying the gleaming silver star on the officer’s blue epaulet. “Ten Hut!” he added, throwing a parade ground salute.

  The brigadier general waved absently in his direction without, again, making any eye contact.

  “Duh fuck is a general doing here?” Astroga whispered as she dropped her salute.

  “Where’s his aide?” Randall asked, referring to the aide d’ camp that always followed generals around.

  “Eaten?” Astroga suggested. “Turned?”

  “May we assist the General, sir?” Randall said, walking over to the officer who seemed frozen in place.

  “I require the presence of an officer or NCO on a matter of urgent business,” the general replied, not looking at the specialist.

  “Uh, yes, sir,” Randall said, looking around. Copley had wandered off with the banker people so he wasn’t available. “Astroga, go get the captain.”