So Uron hadn’t deigned to tell us what we were actually here for – but he’d at least had the good grace to give us a mission brief that included floor-plans of the air base and its buildings, marked with which room the goods were in.
And this was it. Thank fuck.
Katya turned the handle, rose, raised her rifle, and slipped inside, all in one sexily fluid motion. She was shooting again before I could get my gun in the fight. And everyone inside was dead – deader? dead again? – by the time I got inside and cleared the corners.
And then my fucking vision got whited out, again, as without warning she turned on a bright visible light, the lantern mode of a handheld tactical light she’d brought, and now dumped on a desk. While I squeezed my eyes shut against the painful light-amplified supernova, not to mention the return of my pounding headache, I felt her hand squeezing my ass. I knew enough to swing my weapon in front of my crotch before she could reach around and grab that. And I thought:
God, I hate that woman.
* * *
The room itself was some kind of general-staff planning office, as I immediately saw, once I could see again. But not a particularly huge one, so I sent second squad back to strongpoint along our infil route, including and in particular that outside door, while first squad crowded inside with us. I also quickly identified another door, on the opposite wall from the one we’d come in, and checked that it was closed, locked, and intact – then assigned Specialist Cusas to guard it. Otherwise, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot for the rest of us to do, except stand around on our dicks watching Katya work.
She glided around behind one of the desks – the biggest one, made of some dark and polished hardwood – and pulled on a nondescript wall panel, which swung open on recessed hinges. Behind it was an actual safe, a big-ass one, complete with a four-wheel combination lock. Now I was intrigued – what the hell were we here for? Most of what you’d put in a safe, back in the world, was now completely valueless. Neither hesitating, nor referencing anything I could see, Katya entered three numbers, spinning the wheel one direction and the other with clean audible clicks.
The safe door swung open.
I still couldn’t see what was in there, both because the single light on the desk didn’t penetrate the gloom inside, and also because Katya’s lithe body, curvy even underneath 5.11 fatigue bottoms and mag-filled assault vest, was blocking it. She reached in, picked up something big with her bare arms, turned, and put it on the desk. I actuated the white light on my own barrel rail, illuminating it.
It was a cardboard box, roughly cubical.
And the text on the side was visible, if not legible. In front of a big royal-looking crest was the word Империя – and below that, Русский Стандарт Водка. But even farther down, and small enough that I had to squint even in the bright glare of my weapon light, was an English translation. As I leaned in to try to read it, Katya removed a second identical box from the safe, then unslung her assault pack, reached in, and pulled out something rolled up tightly. When she unfurled it, it was a bigger insertion ruck. And I finally saw the tiny English text at the bottom of the box read:
Russian Standard Imperia Vodka.
As Katya reached out to slide the first box into the ruck, I pinned her wrist to the surface of the desk. When I spoke, I kept my voice down to a whisper. But I sure didn’t moderate my tone.
“You have gotta fucking be kidding me.”
She didn’t answer, but just looked up into my eyes – and that look was mean. She yanked her wrist free of my hand.
I tried again. “That had seriously better not be Russian Standard vodka in there.” I unsheathed my combat knife from its chest rig, sliced the tape on top of the box, and flipped open the flaps.
Inside were… twelve one-liter bottles of clear glass. With clear liquid inside.
“It’s not, you idiot,” Katya hissed back, slamming the flap closed again, and resuming her packing operation. “Is Russian Standard Imperia. The premium stuff. That shit is like fifty dollars a bottle.”
I couldn’t quite believe this, despite the fact that virtually everything that had happened in the last six months was pretty much beyond belief. I grabbed her wrist again. “You want money? I’ll give you the twelve hundred dollars. I’ll give you twelve thousand. Money’s free now.”
She returned my look – but all the meanness melted away… into something blank. And ice-cold. And much scarier. Her voice like a knife of chilled steel, she hissed, “Is free because worthless. But this… this is priceless.” She twisted her wrist in an arc, breaking my hold on it, then reversed the hold by grabbing my own wrist, locking it, bending it backward, and forcing me halfway to my knees.
“Anyway, not your fucking business.”
She released her wrist-lock on me, got the ruck cinched around both cases of booze, and then looked around – for the biggest man nearby, I guess, which happened to be Staff Sergeant Chandler. “You. Big man. Hump my ruck.” She shoved it across the desk at him. Well, that explained why no sailors. One man could carry this scavenging haul out of here, albeit with some difficulty. And only if he wanted to.
Chandler looked a question at me, visibly annoyed.
As I rose to my full height and rubbed my wrist, I swear to God I was on the verge of telling him to pour it all out – over Katya’s head. And then light her on fire. But I couldn’t realistically do that – everyone knows that, except in the movies, 80-proof liquor isn’t flammable. Okay, on some level, I also knew I needed to master myself and do what was necessary to see to my men’s welfare – their survival, even. And indulging my rage, and massively pissing off our Russian masters, wasn’t going to do it. Though it hurt my head to do so, I nodded my assent.
As Chandler picked up the sagging ruck and shrugged into it, I succumbed to another temptation, knowing the last thing I should be doing was burning more time on target. Nonetheless, I hissed, “How the hell did you even know this was here?”
Now Katya smiled, revealing those sharp canine teeth of hers. “Dipshit Omani flag officer bragged about it in email. Day before he died.” I might have known. She hefted her rifle and turned toward the exit. I took a breath, and opened my mouth to get the men moving. Finally.
Something banged on the other door, the one behind us – loud.
Cusas shuffled two steps backward from his position guarding it, and brought his rifle to his shoulder, as did every other Ranger in the room. Only one person stepped toward the door.
Katya.
* * *
This time I resisted the temptation to grab her wrist.
I just knelt down and hissed in her ear. “Leave it.”
Not looking away from her lock-picking work, she said, “Might be survivors.” I didn’t have to ask if her intention was to rescue them. It wasn’t. Maybe she was fooling the others, the young guys in first squad. But not me. She was probably hoping they were not just survivors – but heavily strapped, and itching for a scrap. She sure as hell was.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s not gonna be survivors.”
And it wasn’t. I already knew that, too. It didn’t take a rocket surgeon to make that prediction – virtually no one left walking the Earth was a survivor. But it didn’t matter. She was on a rail. She stood up, raised her rifle with one hand, and gripped the door handle with the other.
I tried one last time. “Why? What the hell for?”
Now she looked at me, and smiled again. She looked both deeply happy… and completely insane. “Because we can. Because we are free. And there is no one to tell us no.”
All I could do was back off, bring my own weapon online, and side-step so I wouldn’t be in the direct path of whatever the hell came out from behind that door. The three of us – her, Cusas, and me – covered the sector in a shallow arc. The rest of the squad behind us didn’t need me to tell them what to do – mainly cover our six, and not accidentally light us up when and if things went hot. Katya yanked the door open in one
smooth motion.
Behind it was… another wall.
One made of boxes and crates. It was clearly a barricade, stacked floor to ceiling. This slightly caught me by surprise. And it took me a few seconds to develop a theory as to what was behind that. A few seconds too long, as it turned out.
Cusas stepped forward in the glare of the weapon lights, and peered into the middle of the stacked crates. He stuck his rifle barrel under a rotted slat of wood, and nudged it free. I opened my mouth to tell him not to fucking touch that. Again, too slow.
“Holy shit, dude,” Cusas said, peering inside. “Twinkies! A whole case of them!”
We could hear the schoolboy delight dripping from his voice. But nobody ever got a chance to prove or disprove the theory that Twinkies remain edible even after the end of the world… because, with the one rotted slat removed, the rest of the decomposing crate collapsed into itself, from the weight above. And with that box crushed, most of the rest of the barricade came tumbling down around it. Cusas was playing high-stakes Jenga – with all our lives.
And we’d all just lost.
Because now we all knew exactly what was behind the barricade, and why it was still there. This had been a last stand against the dead, presumably one for the Omani Air Force personnel who had worked in this building and lived long enough to make it here. But they had lost their last stand. And not because the barricade had been breached. No, evidently it had held. But that didn’t matter in the least. Because – as I intuited, and I had no doubt in my bones about this – someone already infected had been allowed in behind it. And in the ensuing outbreak inside, in tightly enclosed quarters, with the room all sealed up and no way to escape… they had torn each other to pieces.
And now the pieces were tearing into us.
* * *
I stepped backward, fast but smooth, firing nonstop at point-blank range, trying to identify chin points – behind which would be brainstems – in the middle of the mass of writhing and moaning flesh spilling out into the room.
Katya was doing the same, beside me.
But Specialist Cusas had tripped, or been knocked over. And now the unleashed horde was falling on him, scrabbling and grasping – so far only his legs up to the knees, but rising fast, approaching his mid-thighs – so I switched my fire selector to full-auto and emptied the mag just over his head. Then I let the rifle fall on its single-point tactical sling, planted my back foot, reversed momentum, lunged forward, and seized Cusas by his left wrist. All ten of our fingers dug into each other’s straining forearms. And before I could swing around to grab his right hand, Chandler was already there, doing it for me. With something like 52 pounds of fucking vodka on his back, in addition to his regular combat load, he’d beaten everyone else to the rescue.
Bracing like hell, we yanked Cusas free from the grabbing and grappling meat mafia that held him – and instead of spending the time to get him to his feet, we just kept on hauling, running straight out the opposite door with him dragging on the floor between us. We passed between the two door sentries, not to mention everyone else in the squad firing flat-out, all of them now collapsing by fire-teams, self-organizing. Only once we were out in the hallway did I yank Cusas to his feet, and give him a solid shove to get him moving under his own power.
Then I did a head-count as the others stopped firing – in most cases because they were empty – and dashed out past me. Last out was Katya. She looked okay, but it was hard to tell in the blackness of the hall, lit by various jerkily shaking weapon lights. All that white light wasn’t going to help us break contact, so after I did a lightning tactical reload by touch – letting the priceless empty mag just hit the deck at my feet – and started firing again to cover the withdrawal, I hit my radio, using the PTT button on my rifle’s vertical foregrip.
“Two Bravo! Go dark!”
As all the bouncing glare behind me winked out, I actuated the IR illuminator on my barrel rail, then moved my left hand in a flash to pull my NVGs down – all the while stepping backward, holding my weapon one-handed, and squeezing its trigger without interruption. As soon as I could see again… I really wished I hadn’t.
Spooky FPS had turned to live-action Aliens ride.
* * *
Basically, the hallway was filling up with writhing, grasping, advancing bodies – animated and lethally infectious corpses, studded with gnashing, black, rotted teeth in leprous mouths, rheumy eyes, green or gray skin, and grasping wizened fingers with splintered nails – and it was filling up faster than I could shoot to stop it. It was like there had been a giant room filled with meat, and it was now being pushed through a 10x10-foot channel and squeezed out of the building, all at high speed.
I steeled myself to keep up my covering fire, shooting and back-pedaling, for about another three seconds, which I sure as hell hoped was enough time for everyone to get the fuck out of this dead-meat shit-show.
Then I turned and legged it.
The good news was I could run a hell of a lot faster facing forward. The bad news was now no one was holding the dyke, and I couldn’t see – but only hear, and imagine I felt – the writhing horde rushing forward, about to fall on me from behind. Every nerve in my back fired madly, anticipating the crushing weight, the texture of viscous rotted skin, the slimy mouths full of dull teeth tearing into my flesh, as I was taken down from behind and eaten alive. That was if I was lucky, and not instead infected and turned – into a flesh-eating freak who would remorselessly hunt, infect, and devour my own brothers.
It probably only took another three seconds for me to reach the end of that hallway, hang a scudding left, fly down the last hall with my boots barely touching the floor, and then launch out the open outside door.
But each of those seconds felt like a lifetime.
The good news was everyone else was already out. The other good news was there were already guys positioned right there, poised to slam the door shut as soon as I got clear. The bad news was they were too late – the ravening horde was right behind me, and weighed a lot more than the two or three kitted-up Rangers trying to shove the now-heaving door closed.
And the other bad news was everything else.
* * *
Now it was a shoving match. One we could stay in for a while, but never win. This struck me as a perfect metaphor for our position in the world now – we could keep ourselves alive, for a while. But eventually the dead would roll over us. Eventually death was going to take us all – on this mission, or the next, or fifty years down the long hopeless road. Death never packed it in.
And death always won in the end.
Like I said – the mind does funny shit in combat.
I battled to shut down the exasperating existential voice in my damned head, and instead did something useful. First, I took a look around outside, generating some situational awareness. Two facts were important – one, second squad had already set security, in a wide arc behind us, facing out. And, two, they weren’t engaged – no other dead were moving on us from other sectors of the air base. Yet.
Then I turned back and put my shoulder, and my full weight, into that door. It was heaving against us like a fun-fair ride, and even when the three of us synchronized the timing of our shoves, we couldn’t get the damned thing to latch shut. This was in no small part due to the various body parts – some recognizable as appendages, others disturbingly vague – already reaching and squeezing through the crack.
And, because it was inches away, I now worried about the infection risk. The smell pouring out of there was enough to empty your stomach – imagine dozens of six-month-old rotting dead bodies, except being heaved and shoved around, only a few inches away, and you get the idea. A little later than I should have, I worked out that Cusas was the man to my left, so I gave him a yank, pulling him a few inches farther from the crack, and what was coming out of it.
Then, trying to master my breathing, I did something else useful – I quickly checked him out. He’d been about one-third covered in
infected meat stew back there. And while it had looked like the third with no orifices or mucous membranes, I still wanted to see the rest of him. Yeah, we were pretty much fully tasked at the moment, but you never had enough time for an outbreak in your ranks. I flipped up my NVGs, pulled a tactical light from my belt, and lit him up.
Yeah, I know – violating my own rules. RHIP.
He looked dry. And his skin and eyes looked fine – none of the black spiderweb lines, or rheumy film, the telltale signs of the turning, that I saw with sinking heart when I lost my other men. It was too early to declare Cusas healthy. But he at least wasn’t going to turn in the next few minutes.
And now it was time to get the fuck out of Dodge.
I skipped the radio, figuring everyone was already within earshot, and it wasn’t like noise discipline mattered anymore – the throng of dead assholes behind this door were moaning and hissing loud enough to, well, wake the dead. Another thing we’d learned was this was absolutely guaranteed to bring more of them. That meant the only priority now was speed. Stealth was out the window. Or the door. Or the fallen barricade. Whatever.
I shouted to be heard over all the chaos.
“Two Bravo! On my signal we break contact, and displace to the beach! No covering fire, no bounding overwatch. Just fucking haul ass! Hoo-ah?” I heard a few answering hoo-ahs over all the moaning. But anyone who hadn’t heard me would get the picture soon enough. This wasn’t a complicated military maneuver. This wasn’t any kind of military maneuver – it was just running like hell.
“On three, two, one—”
All of us let the door go at once, turned together, and took off like men with two asses, both of them on fire, streaking across the north side of the air base, over the trampled perimeter fence, and back up into the dunes. I was still sucking wind badly, both from the exertion and – I’m not ashamed to admit it – also fear, good old horror-movie shock from the last couple of minutes of bad surprises. So it was easier than usual for me to play Tailgunner Charlie – riding herd on my flock from the rear, making sure no one fell off the back. And then someone did.
Last Stand Page 5
